


Four Years

by CircusBones



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Friendship/Love, Male-Female Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-20 06:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CircusBones/pseuds/CircusBones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story in snap-shots. Raleigh and Mako navigate the bond forged, and learn that it's as complicated and rife with failings as any connection. The difference is that, even if they fail, they'll always have each other. (Now with 100% more linear story-telling!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All right, so however new the fandom, I get really apologetic when posting my first fic therein! I haven't really read any PR fic aside from some little ones on Tumblr, hopefully I'm not already falling into tropes. Mostly this mess of an idea was for my bff and myself, and our deep love for Mako, and a relationship between a male and female lead that, even if you didn't read it as romantic, was equal and built on mutual respect and became love, platonic or otherwise, by the end. More of that in my cinema, please.

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"And in the sea that's painted black,  
Creatures lurk below the deck  
But you're a king and I'm a lionheart..."

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It's surreal, is what it is. The tinkling of champagne glasses, the long, soft dress she's in, all the men in suits or tuxes instead of the standard layer of grime that Mako had grown accustomed to seeing. It is surreal to think that five days ago she'd been floating in the Pacific, willing life back into her friend and copilot, surreal that now those standing here are alive, well, and fielding questions at a gala in their honor. 

It's surreal that her father isn't there.

A glance out the windows of the fine ballroom, at the gigantic ribcage far off in the bay, bones pointing up toward the night sky over San Francisco, and Mako's world balances out again. This isn't some cruel, taunting dream, this is a world that is eager to finally celebrate again, despite its lingering pains. A world that wants to celebrate them.

“Did you mean that?” Raleigh's voice draws her attention away from the view, back into the room at large. He's talking to Geiszler, the distracted scientist having just fielded a question from the lone reporter who's been circling the gala. He shrugs, smiling as the reporter moves on to flag down Herc. 

“Well, no. I mean, if yeah, the rest of 'em did survive you blasting their world all to kingdom come, the rift is still closed. Doubt it'll ever open again in that guy or anybody else's lifetime.” Mako blinks.

“Yet, you think it -will- open again one day?” She asks, her voice lowering. Raleigh's arm slips across her shoulders, the tux unable to hide the muscle underneath. It's a casual gesture between two people very familiar with each others well-being by now, however hidden they might be to others. The tension Mako didn't even known she'd been carrying in her shoulder blades eases.

“One day,” Geiszler is less flippant now, looking at her over his new glasses, “But I mean, it took them how many millions of years to try us again? And they failed this time too, eventually, so.” Another shrug, “Judging by their precise time tables, I'd say the human race still has at least a break of a few thousand years from those locusts. No need to get people who aren't scientists speculating and scared. We've got a nice break during which to clean things back up!” He beams, the picture of optimism.

“I am very comforted,” Mako grins, reaching for another glass of sweet, fizzy courage from a passing server. Giants she can battle, can thrust a massive blade up through just fine. A gathering of grateful folk looking to thank her and, potentially, ask similar jarring questions, is another matter. She downs the drink in one go, and Raleigh chuckles at her side as they, together, move to drift further away from the edge of the room and into the crowd. Moving his arm from around her shoulders and offering her his elbow instead, she notices that his own hand is twitching a little, and glances up at him with a lofted brow, “You have been a hero before, though. Aren't you used to this kind of thing?”

“Not really,” He admits, sheepishly. Mako takes his arm,“I mean sure, five years ago I was all swagger and ego to hide behind, busy embarrassing my brother,” She grins a little at that mental image. She'd seen a little bit of that cocky young pilot, in the Drift. He'd looked a lot more carefree, yes. “S'a little different now, though. We've lost so many people...” His tone changes, and Mako nods, biting her own lip. 

“As you would say,” She gives his arm a squeeze, “'I've got your back'.” He grins again.

“All I need, Miss Mori.”

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In the weeks that follow it's all parades and interviews and a few tearful ceremonies. Neither of them balk from any of this, Mako knows. They're as grateful and relieved as anyone in the world, and are both humbled that people see them as heroes. 

There is no privacy, however, not from the moment they leave their hotel rooms or the bunkers they're staying in. It's back in Hong Kong that Raleigh points it out, as everyone around the memorial they're honoring has their eyes fixed on Mako, setting flowers and lighting her candles for Stacker, what should be a very private moment made very public.

“Without Gipsy, we're all the armor each other has, huh?” He mutters, meaning it with his usual, barely-restrained emotions, trying to step into the cross-hairs of every camera pointed Mako's way. With her own practiced, easy mask, Mako smiles a little, reaching up to take his hand, squeezing it, until he at last stops glaring at those around them. He's right though, and in the warm glow of the candles, surrounded by Chuck's tags and her father's photograph, newspaper clippings of the Kaidanovskys, Mako forgets, mostly, the other eyes on her. She has her armor standing by, and he does well.

Raleigh always needs her a bit more, however. His temper still gets the better of him, and as time goes on and the initial euphoric shine wears off of their story and real work on the world needs doing, reporters start trying to dig deeper and deeper, poking healing wounds or trying to invent stories where there aren't any. Neither of them have much of a problem with all the speculation about their relationship. Likely because the speculation about other things is much worse. Like when certain magazines can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that Mako isn't Raleigh's sidekick, that she wasn't a pretty face tossed into a machine with the “real” pilot for publicity (for godssakes, have they forgotten in a couple of months what the last DECADE has been like? That no one was giving a shit about publicity?). 

Mako can shrug it off, behind her steady mask, the natural armor that was her courtesy. Clearly, these people had no idea how Jaegers worked, and anyone reading their publications who did? Would laugh and dismiss such speculation. You didn't win a Jaeger fight with a token in the other chair, you could not even function. But it's been bothering Raleigh more and more.

The last interview they do for a long time ends when the reporter starts asking about their families. Mako braces for the inevitable, and sure enough, when he's asked what it was like, having a girl he barely knew see his grief over his brother, Raleigh nearly throttles the guy. It's Mako who stops him, with one hand to his arm, but she wishes she could be better armor for him. 

“Maybe it is time to stop these,” She says, quietly, on the ride back to their hotel, “People do not need to read what we're saying, they need to -see- us helping again.” Beside her, with his head in his hands, fingers rubbing into his eye sockets, Raleigh nods, heaving a deep sigh.

“Yeah,” He rumbles, “I need to be doing the things I'm good at...how do keep handling this kind of shit, Mako?”

“You know how,” Mako reminds him. She knows he's seen her, the girl after the monster, the girl raised by Stacker to be tough, to never cede ground to those who'd underestimate or try to hurt her. Raleigh nods, and takes her hand again, “I am even stronger with you, though.” She admits. 

“Guess I need to work on balancing it out a little,” He murmurs, linking their fingers together and eying the passing, rainy streets, the people going about their business like they hadn't in years, his words coming like a deluge now, “I just...I guess I do underestimate you too sometimes, after losin' your family twice now, dealing with all them saying you're just the pretty face, I don't like the idea, that you're stuck being strong for the both of u-...” He's cut off, as with her other hand Mako turns his face toward her, pressing her lips to his gently to silence him.

It's chaste, and sweet, and she knows he understands, both their eyes shut for half a moment. She feels his nerves unravel under her touch, his frame slump back in his seat. Not very long ago, that kind of thing would have been very much outside her comfort zone. They were far beyond awkwardness however, they'd seen each others fissures and dents. Mako knew that Raleigh needed softness, needed soothing, physical contact sometimes. “Let's both go back to the things we know how to do,” She says, simply, and he nods, giving her a little smile, her fingers twitching under his.

.

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Mako still doesn't fully realize though, how profound and important her and Raleigh's connection had become, in so short a time. Neither of them do, really, until she's in Australia for a year. 

The critics be damned, her expertise does not lie, and lands her an offer to head up the next phase of Jaeger technology: cleanup crews. Smaller, less-battle-oriented Jaegers are being developed for the heavy lifting required for cleaning up the major cities and turning ruins back into skyscrapers. For years there'd been a collective lethargy over rebuilding, with the Rift still open and the only weapons available often doing just as much damage. Now, however, the world is rousing and there's a lot to repair, and technology available to help.

They say goodbye as if the parting won't seem long, but even with weekly video calls Mako finds herself feeling very bereft. She tells herself that it's because, after the loss of so much and so many, Raleigh really had become her family, but it was more than that and they both knew it, weren't afraid to admit it, not at this point in time. They were two halves that made a working whole, in and out of Gipsy Danger. Maybe it would be good for them, learning to work on their own as well, but the bond, the friendship was still vital.

She gleefully shares with him the work she's doing with the Australian engineers, he just as excitedly tells her that he'll be driving one of her machines cleaning up San Francisco, as soon as it lands. Mako tells him about the evening spent with Herc's remaining family, Raleigh confides in her that he's finally seeing a therapist for his PTSD over Yancy's death. For a little while, the calls slack or get shorter, while Raleigh starts his long, rewarding days in a single-manned Jaeger, and while Mako tries dating around a little.

She sees an engineer named Harry for about four months, and he's everything she knows that she should, logically, be more crazy about...smart, funny, good-looking, a little more outgoing than she is, and he's in her field so they've got plenty to talk about. And he's not too shabby in bed. 

“Sooo, what's the problem?” Raleigh asks her, wiping smudges of axle grease and grime from his brow during their video chat, in the middle of her morning, his evening. Mako smiles, tilting her head. He looks like he did back in the hangars, like all the pilots did then, dirty, sweaty and satisfied. The scars on his chest make her heart turn over, as they always do.

“I don't know,” She sighs, her accent thicker with her distress, and he laughs because she isn't convincing. Mako squints at him, sticking out her tongue, “He does not care for me still fighting, sparring?” Raleigh smirks, tossing his towel away off screen. She knows he can tell it's much more than that, but Mako doesn't know if she's ready to admit to the biggest problem she's recently discovered in her dating life, to face what putting it into words, out loud, could do, could mean for them. For the friendship they had.

She doesn't know how to tell him that taking a relationship any further emotionally, with any man, without him being able to trust her with the contents of his head and vice-versa, is a practically impossible notion. So instead, she admits to the second-biggest problem, “And he wants me to stay here in Perth with him.” 

“You don't want to?” There's an edge to his voice when he asks, something tense and hopeful, and Mako licks her lips, looking him in the eye, through the screen, and shaking her head.

“I'm supposed to come back to the States in two months, when the hangar there reopens for good,” She tells him, quietly, tucking her hair behind her ears. It's streaked with green, now. Raleigh smiles, that slow, ridiculous smile that always, almost manages to undo her. And nope, there's no way in hell she can stay in Perth. 

“Well...stringin' the poor guy along when you already know what you want, that aint you Mako,” He clears his throat, “It's much kinder to be honest.”

“I knew you would say that.”

“Of course you did.”

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When she moves back to the States, he's already seeing Kasha.

She's good for him, Mako can see how much calmer, easier, lighter he is since he's been in therapy, and since Kasha came along. He smiles easier, there's less tension in his limbs. Still, some conflicting, foreign thing curls in her gut. It's disappointment, she knows, even as she stubbornly shoves it aside, not a hint of it visible. What she and Raleigh have is no less special. And Kasha certainly doesn't seem bothered by it, by the bear-hug her boyfriend gives his co-pilot in the airport upon her return.

“My dad was a Jaeger pilot,” She tells Mako, warmly, over dinner on her first evening back in the States, “His partner was like an uncle to me, so. This one doesn't shut up about ya!” She nudges Raleigh good-naturedly, who only meets Mako's eyes for a moment. 

He's happy. And he feels kind of guilty about it. 

They shouldn't need to talk, but they do anyway when he helps her move into her new apartment, sans-Kasha, “I mean, I know you just broke up with someone, so...” He pauses, looking at her. It's more than that, it's always more than they ever say out loud, but even with minds connected, like theirs always are, somehow they both believe that if they don't say it, they don't have to face it. It's a new thing, but perhaps an expected one.

“...So, I am just hoping that I still get to have time with my dearest friend,” Mako saves him, pushing down her feelings as thoroughly as he does, and sees him relax as she stands on her toes to kiss his cheek. He has someone good for him. Someone who is making him lighter, happier, along with familiar, rewarding work. Mako isn't going to jeopardize that for anything in the world. 

And besides, she grows to really like Kasha, who turns out to be another engineer on her project. They cross paths plenty at work, overseeing the production and shipment of the mini-Jaegers, and the screening of pilots. 

Eventually though, Mako cannot resist the call of the machine. Before long she's right out there with Raleigh and his crew, gleefully clearing away the countless ruins in the city, to be recycled into new materials with which to rebuild. The tension between them dissipates completely for a time, replaced with the rowdy, familiar comradery. They hit the bars with their crews on the weekends, and Mako thinks this is how it might have been, had they been co-pilots together back when every pilot had their own action figure. She thinks she likes this better, though.

Mako does try dating again a few times, nice people, but that disconnect remains. She's known too deep a bond to settle for anything less, and that thought actually has her analyzing, employing her inquiring mind and reading up on certain things. She knows that Jaeger pilots always became close, everyone does, so many were often family members or close friends to begin with. In the short, though thorough history of pilots she reads, a small handful had been both unrelated -and- of each others preferred genders. And of those, only about half had become something more. 

So it was not an inevitability, or some side-effect. But one -was- trusted with more of a person than most people would ever understand or experience, and Mako and Raleigh did still trust each other to the end of the Earth. With a deep sigh one night, Mako realizes that she cannot simply, purely claim the Drift, for the longing she's so been denying, hiding. It's nothing she can't go on handling, of course, and moves on to the further realization that, attraction or not, her love for her other half of the whole remains. That's something valuable, they'll have each other forever, in some way.

What really smarts, she admits to the walls of her apartment one night, third glass of wine in hand, what really fucking burns is that Raleigh doesn't seem to have the same disconnect with Kasha that she's had with everyone she's tried to grow close to. He seems all right with someone who doesn't know his head...and maybe that's exactly what he needs right now.

Mako sighs into the smart, minimalist room, rubbing her temples. This is how their bond really worked. He never once had tried to stop her going to Perth, even if he'd still been learning how to stand without her. She couldn't bring herself to say or do anything to ruin his good thing, much as it made her secretly ache. No, the Drift hadn't make her attracted to him. It had made them both too valuable to each other to hurt each other, to deny each other what they needed, to risk breaking apart the whole.

Though, as she later learns, if he wanted to ruin his -own- good thing, she wouldn't have such a problem helping him. At least, not right away.

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She's been back in San Francisco for over a year when Raleigh shows up at her door, feeling and looking more drunk than he actually is. Mako knows, because she's seen him really and truly wasted more than once. The man leaning in her door frame simply has a good solid buzz, mixed with what she soon learns is heart-break. 

“Kasha left the place,” He tells her, once she's let him in, he's kicked off his boots and fallen onto her sofa. Mako winces, shutting the door and crossing into her small kitchen. She always keeps a pack of his favorite beer in the back of the fridge, just in case. Seeing as he smelled like scotch, beer and various other liquids were perhaps just what he needed.

“Left?” She prompts, pouring him two glasses, one of beer and the other of ice water, eying him across her breakfast bar. His clothes are a rumpled mess, but she could see that he'd showered after work. He nods, eyes on her ceiling fan.

“We uh, we fought last night...I thought we'd work it out tonight when I got home, but,” He sits up as she settles beside him, handing him his beer, setting the water and a bag of corn chips on the coffee table. She knows his hangover cures and detox methods very well. “...Came home and most of her stuff was gone.” Mako's eyes widen.

“That...that was some fight, then?” She blinks, watching as he downs most of the beer in one go. He winces, nodding again. 

“S'been coming for a while,” He admits, slowly, running a hand through his hair, before setting down his empty glass, reaching for the water. There's still dirt under his fingernails, and Mako softens. “She's uh, been hinting at some things, came to a head last night.”

“Things...?”

“Like, us getting a real house....rings...” He swallows, and Mako feels herself stiffen again. “How the world's really a good place to have a family in again, finally.”

“She...she is not wrong,” She replies, softly. Raleigh heaves out a long breath, reaching up and rubbing his eyes. 

“Aint that...I mean,” He chuckles, admitting, “It's kinda that, sure, think plenty of us will always be a little jumpy at that thought, lookin' over our shoulders...” Yes, Mako understood that. For how much there'd been a baby-boom in the two years since the rift closed, there had also been that shell-shocked portion of the population who just couldn't shake off the fear, “But I mean, I think I could see it. Some kid with my brother's awful name...middle, mind, not first,” He smirks a little, emptying the second glass too. “Just...”

“...Not with her?” The words leave Mako's lips before she can halt them, like she has halted so many words, and her throat closes up after them. Raleigh, meanwhile, just dips his head, blonde hair falling over his brow. He needs a haircut, she thinks, he's been putting it off too long, like he always does.

“Yanno, she asked the same thing,” He chuckles again, “Aw hell, Mako, I love her but we've...” The words halt, and Mako freezes again, watching him, warily, as his head turns and he looks at her. His eyes are steady and ferocious and soft, “I think Kash and I both were in love with what we gave each other, not...not with each other, not for the last little while.”

“That is some clarity of thought,” She breathes, and Raleigh shrugs.

“I had the whole day, and then three stiff drinks at the Honch to mull it over on,” He sighs, “Damnit...she knew, she always knew, even when I didn't say a fucking thing, was still shoving it down and away...” Mako feels something turning over in her, like she might burst, and she knows she should be smarter here, should shut him up right now, get him a blanket and two tylenol PM and let him pass out on her couch, but.

“Knew...?”

“She could never take your place,” He stares at her, and after so many years of keeping a tight reign on it, Mako's resolve snaps, her lungs yanking in a deep breath, “Not...not as my pilot, or friend, but. Damnit, Mako,” He groans, reaching for her. She's already there, sliding into his arms even as he's tugging her close, their lips slanting against each other with a fury.

She should stop. She should end this right now, and he'd listen, but damnit Mako has spent too damn long being the steady one. She -wants-, has wanted for so long now, and knowing that he has as well? There's nothing short of a rampaging Kaiju that could stop them now. 

Every voice in her head silences, as his big arms wrap around her, her own winding around his neck, her hands sliding into his over-grown mop of blonde hair. It's so very different than the only other kiss they've shared, a comforting gesture between friends. This, this, this is a kiss between lovers, and Mako feels his pulse thudding under her hands, under her wrists. He ducks his head to kiss her throat, tasting her own heartbeat as he does, and she feels him shudder under her, his hands sliding down to her hips.

“Mako,” He whispers, and her throat has gone dry, “How long...?”

“Since you started breathing again,” She whispers back, and he's kissing her again, and she's straddling his lap, turning one last ear to her inner voices. They are as silent as the grave. Between his jaw and his lips, she asks right back, “You?”

“When I knew you were my real armor,” He murmurs, those scuffed up, stained hands of his moving to the buttons of her smart blouse, deft as they undo them one by one. They don't talk very much after that, Mako too busy stealing his breath, breathing him in, as if the moment will end too soon and they must get every bit out of it as they can.

She's out of her blouse and he's shed his t-shirt in short time, and Mako finds her hands sliding over the muscled torso she's so long wanted to touch, shivering, making him shiver in turn. He kisses her, clutching her close, pressing her into his skin, as if their bodies can merge the same way their minds have. She finds that she recalls every sweet touch in his memories, all the places that are soft to him, and she finds them. She brushes over his shoulders, his sides, making him grin, half-laughing into her mouth.

He knows her too, though. She'd never told him out loud, but he knows, that she'd been a virgin when they met. She isn't now, but she'd still known back then what kinds of touches from chaste boyfriends in the past had made her sigh in delight. He remembers, of course he does, sliding his rough fingers along her spine and making her groan into the shadowy apartment as he sucks on that one spot just under her jaw.

They're in tune in a way no lover ever has been, that missing jolt, that missing piece. Raleigh has been holding it, and Mako knows now that she's been holding onto his. His faded, work-wrecked jeans go next, while her skirt and stockings provide some more fumbling and laughing, noses brushing against each other. She'd been at the offices today, instead of out in the machines. Still, soon they're back on even ground, he brushing away her bra with a quick motion.

“Mako...” He whispers, in that ragged, rough tone that she'd heard so many times inside of the Gipsy Danger. The voice that says he needs her, no matter how very different this need is. She breathes his name right back to him, cradling his face in her hands before kissing him again, soft and slowly while he tugs off her underwear. She reaches down to yank his away as well, any reasons not to do this long faded, hazy, forgotten. 

She's strong, but willing to let him to lead for a little bit, turning her over onto the cushions, pressing into her with a rough groan. Mako is right there with him, clutching onto him close and gasping into his ear. They're both far too ready for this, far too gone and dissolving into pure need as they move. Raleigh presses his brow to hers, both of them with their eyes shut, and it's almost as if the Drift is all around them in that moment. Bodies moving, hips rolling. There's nothing metaphor about it, Mako distantly muses. They are literally the whole again.

And then they're frantic, clutching, clawing. Trying to dissolve into each other, to become each other, as their minds had once so easily, equally dissolved into one, opened, flowed. It's the same now, gasping into each others mouths, thrusting against each others frames. His is larger, but her's is leaner, sinewy and rippling. She turns them over again, writhing on top of him, crying out into the shadowy room that holds so little of who she is. His hands grip her hips, and then he's lifting her up with ease, still connected, heading for her room. “Through there,” He gasps, “It should be in there...”

“Yes,” She swallows, as he deposits her onto the bed. Her bedroom, the place wherein she actually shows herself. Where the walls are papered with posters of Jaegers, with newspaper clippings, paper fans from Hong Kong, pictures of the two of them and their friends. Her sanctum. They take each other here, mouth to mouth, his big hands brushing through her hair. She runs her lips along the scars on his chest, he nuzzles his face into her neck right before she comes, for the second time. He follows soon after her, falling to pieces all around her, inside of her. 

It's like the Drift, only without all the bad stuff. Or that's how Raleigh hazily describes it, anyway, when she comes back to bed and he wraps her up in his arms, tight and solid and safe. Mako sleeps sound, wrapped up in him, his heartbeat all around her. Each others armor, the halves whole.

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The next morning isn't as simple. Mako's half ready for what he says, resting his chin on the top of her head, as she sits on the edge of her bed. “I can't do it like this.” He murmurs, running his palms over her back, over one of his old t-shirts that she'd thrown on sometime in the night, “It can't start like this.”

“It did start,” Mako reminds him, her face muffled by his chest, her hands gripping his belt. Raleigh winces, and she can feel it, cringing a bit.

“I know, Mako, but,” He sighs, “I still care about her. Not a tenth of what we've got, but I need to break it clean,” That she can agree with, nodding. She cares for Kasha too, after all. But then she feels him tense around her, before he goes on, “...And I'm sure as hell not going to use you.”

“Would...would this be using me, though?” She asks, leaning back to look up at him, tilting her head. He shakes his head. “I don't get a say in that?”

“Can't just stop caring about someone, Mako, and...” He looked at her, steadily, and she realizes how much she's missed looking him in the eye. It used to be the only way they ever spoke, “We owe this a helluvalot more than starting as a rebound.”

“Maybe...” She answers, slowly, squinting, thinking, “...But I also do not think our bond is as breakable as we fear,” The words waver a little, as they've only ever been private thoughts, never voiced. With each other, though, they can voice anything. She started believing in that again last night, “I think it can survive anything we put it through. Even if we mess up.”

“Maybe you're right,” He clutches her close again, pressing his face into her hair, and Mako sighs, still basking in the two of them, even now. “...I still want to be better than this, though, when you get me. Now's not the right time...” 

He's firm when he says it. Mako shakes her head, knowing he means it, knowing she could only argue so much, could remind him of how very right it had been last night. But his expression is resolved, and Mako can only disentangle herself, sighing, reaching for a pair of pajama pants. There's a sudden ache in her chest, that moves through her limbs as she stands. And looking at Raleigh in the middle of her room, she knows he feels it too. “I'm sorry...”

He crosses back to her in a second, drawing her chin up for a soft kiss, “I'm way sorrier, Miss. Mori.”

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.

She barely sees him over the next few weeks. Kasha has already requested a transfer to a research facility about as far from San Francisco as possible, and Raleigh buries himself in working fourteen hour shifts and finding bars to drink at that aren't their crew's regulars. Mako is understanding for a while, until she realizes just how messed up this arrangement is. He can have his space, his time to balance out, she fully understands this. She should, knowing his head better than anyone. But avoiding her entirely is somewhat contradictory to his desire to not fuck things up.

After a month of barely two words from Raleigh during her days out in her machine, Mako decides to take things into her own hands. They'd always been at their best when their motions were synced, their choices paralleled. And so, if he is deciding that distance is best, she surmises, with only a little bit of annoyance, she will match his action. Mako puts in to join one of the rebuilding crews working outside of the States. 

It's three times that she tries to catch Raleigh to tell him, and three times she fails, that he continues to avoid her. With her apartment packed up and her plane leaving in the morning, on her last day of work in San Francisco Mako leaves a note on his locker. 

“I'll be in Hong Kong. The next of our gestures is yours.”

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.

.

It's a month before she hears from him, before his face appears on her computer screen, looking thoroughly shamefaced. “Can we try this again?” Are the first words, rough and haggard in his throat. Mako smiles, under her very own layer of grime from work, nodding, touching the image of his fingertips with her own.

“You always did have bad timing.”

It's slow, at first. It's like it was back in Perth, a weekly conversation between the dearest of friends. Never mind that at night, alone, Mako hasn't ever been able to fall asleep without reliving, in detail, their first and only night together. That night is seared into her memory like a sweet pain she doesn't want to ever lose, now that they're talking again. It's only a few weeks before, between his tells she knows so well and that familiar, aching tone to his voice that Mako guesses, correctly, that he's felt the same. 

Over the next few months, their chats become more frequent, faces closer to screens, words pouring out of previously stifled lips. Every emotion that they've ever let remain quiet, every annoyance, every fear, every moment of absolute awe and love and admiration for each other that they'd ever left to gestures, to eyes, to expressions, they say with absolute clarity and diction now. Because there is nothing, no walls, no secrets between them, even almost three years removed from Gipsy Danger's circuits. 

A week before Gottlieb and Geiszler tie the knot in Hong Kong, Raleigh finally shows up outside of her apartment again, this one a bit shabbier than the last. It's a downpour outside, and at the sight of him sober, soaked and grinning like a little boy, Mako feels every nerve ending jump in elation. She reaches out, yanking him inside, laughing as she peels off his jacket. 

“I'm sorry,” He breathes against her lips, between both of their giddy laughing. 

“You know you're forgiven,” She grins, tugging him further in, urgent hands tugging at his shirt, a trail of wet clothes eventually leading into her bedroom, “We have it now...”

They barely leave her apartment all that rainy, blissful week, save perhaps to find food. 

One evening, setting aside empty takeaway boxes that had once held a massive army of dumplings, Mako falls back against Raleigh's chest with a contented sigh, the rain on the windows pattering out night music. He's winding a pale pink streak of her hair around his finger, murmuring quietly, “I don't ever want to be apart again,” Mako nods, turning, looking at him, sliding up to cradle his face in her hands.

“Then let's not.” She whispers, kissing him softly, soundly, before they dissolve into each other again, into their very own Drift.

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In the end, it isn't a few thousand years before the rift opens again, it's four. 

There are many who are paralyzed in terror, by the implications. The pilots of the rebuilt Gipsy Danger aren't among them. The Drift is impossibly welcome and easy for them, the place where they'd become the whole. They are more complete than anyone wading into that vicious ocean, leading bigger, stronger machines behind them. They'd saved the world once, and had only become stronger since. They look at each other steadily through the equipment, eyes fixed, minds melding, wide grins spreading.

They'd saved the world once, and they'd do it again.

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	2. Little Rebellions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for all the little prompts I've started getting/reading for this little 'verse. Missing scenes from the beginning, future scenes of horrible domesticity, angst, violence, smut, and the adventures of found families. Tumblr fandom, I love you weirdos very much.

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"Little Rebellions"

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He's fixated on the little ring almost as soon as her top is up, off and through her hair, the gem catching the dim light in her apartment as she slides back onto her bed. She's all angles and shadows and a dark, deceptively shy smile, and all Raleigh can see is her sharp stare and that glint of metal. 

“That...wasn't there last time,” He murmurs, shucking off the last of his own wet clothes. The rain is still falling in a downpour on Hong Kong, falling heavy on her windows and balcony, but inside it's warm, and Mako's finally, finally with him again, tugging him into her arms, wrapping a blanket around the both of them. Warming his chill, goosebump-y skin with hers, her small hands sliding everywhere they can reach. Drinking him in with her touch. Chasing salty raindrops with her tongue.

“I didn't have it in, last time,” She murmurs back, sliding her fingers through his damp hair, drawing him down for another kiss. Raleigh's hands move over her frame in turn, slide along her hips and ribs and yes, as vivid as the memory of their first time was, as seared into his brain as the feel of her has been ever since, the real thing is so, so much better. There's that one new variable, though, his thumb brushing over her nipple and the ring there, getting a breathless chuckle against his lips.

“When did you...?” Cause frankly, as eager as he is for her, anything new or unknown about Mako is kind of a delightful, insistent notion. And the way she bites her lip, grinning, just as delighted over having something about herself that he does not know, it has him grinning back. 

“I was a very good kid,” She whispers, “My rebellions were little ones...or hidden ones...” She trails off, gasping sharply when his lips go to her breast, tongue flicking that little bit of metal. He grins even wider against her flesh, hands splaying along her spine when her back arches. 

“I love 'em all,” He breathes, moving back to kiss her lips, to touch her hair, their legs tangling together under the heavy, warm blanket. Raleigh can feel himself warming too, under his skin, wrapping himself up in her even tighter. She groans, kissing him deeper, deeper, until he's drowning in home.

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	3. Japan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some fluff! Because I predict the next chapter will very much cover some violence and adventure. Also probably some fluff. I'm sure you can feel my homesickness for Japan coming through in this one.

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"Japan"

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Mako is absentmindedly twisting the wedding favors in her ears, small silver studs in the shape of the symbol for Pi. She'd checked off “Pi” on their invitation, over the other two options. Back in his suitcase and on his one and only dress jacket, were evidence of Raleigh's choice, cufflinks in the shape of Kaiju skulls. 

They're flying Air Japan to Tokyo, having left Hong Kong soon after the wedding. They both want to try working and living somewhere new. Or rather, somewhere that's new to them, as a pair, as adults...or adult-shaped humans, at least. They're giving this its best chance at a second start.

She's smiling lightly to herself, and she hasn't been able to stop, really. Raleigh's passed out at her side, snoring softly into his headrest. Their fingers are linked tight, his palm warm on hers in the quiet cabin. Mako kind of wishes she could doze off as well, the post-reception after party the night before had gone on until 4am, but she's too excited. She hasn't been to her home country in years now. And this time, she gets to show it to someone new. Someone she loves.

Someone who wakes up with a start and a hacking cough, mid-snore, when the drink cart is announced over the speakers. Mako laughs softly, and gets a mock-frown in reply. “Someday you won't lord it over me, girl, how much better you hold your sauce.” He retorts. Mako shrugs.

“Someday!” She replies, cheerily, kissing his knuckles, “But really, who knew Gottlieb could drink you under the table?”

“I let him win, was a wedding present,” Raleigh maintains, and Mako laughs again. He leans sideways to kiss the top of her hair, before flagging down the cart as it passes. With easy, if at times incorrectly pronounced Japanese, he orders himself a beer and a tube of star chips. Mako eyes him sideways as the cart goes on, taking a chip when he offers.

“I've never asked you, how you speak Japanese so well.” She notes, surprised at herself, now that she realizes it. Raleigh shrugs, pouring his Kirin into the plastic cub provided.

“Well, or passable?” He grins at her, and she chuckles.

“Passable,” She agrees, and he outright laughs.

“And to be fair, I can't read most kanji to save my life. But I can hold my own in conversation...you can help me out,” He takes a sip, still grinning, “When I first joined the Jaeger program, my Sensei in the training facility was Japanese. But even before that...” He looks thoughtful then, and Mako waits, stealing another chip. “My best friend as a kid, up in Anchorage, his dad was Japanese as well, didn't speak any English. Worked the fishing, crabbing rigs, so, he was gone a lot. Daniel spent a lot of time at our house when we were both 'round ten years old.”

“He taught you?” Mako smiles a little, picturing that. Raleigh nods, smiling himself at the memory. She loves when she can get him dwelling on the better memories. They both do.

“Dan had some rad cartoons and movies from Japan, that his dad would bring home?” He shakes his head, “No subtitles most of the time, so, he'd translate for me an' Yancy.” 

“That's sweet,” Mako bites her lip, tilting her head as his smile fades just slightly, his hand returning to take up hers. “...He was still there, wasn't he, when...?”

“When the coast got all but taken out, yeah, him and his mom,” Raleigh nods, taking another long sip of his beer, “Still, those were some great memories...”

“Your Japanese will be even better, before long,” She promises at length, and his smile returns. 

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Japan has taken a certain level of initiative regarding the mini-Jaegers that is staggering. Raleigh sees them everywhere, not just as repair crews in the city, though they've gotten a lot done on that front too. They're also doing general construction elsewhere, rebuilding coastlines that Kaiju and earthquakes alike have altered, even doing factory work.

And back on her native soil, Mako has a hard time convincing the Shatterdome that yes, she does still want to work, not simply to settle in as one of her country's greatest heroes. The world loves her all the more for it, and Raleigh can only grin through the whole spectacle. He likes this. He likes that finally, she's the one in the spotlight, she's the one getting the most interview questions, the one who has to say he wasn't -her- sidekick. Both of them love it, for a little while anyway. But they're happier working.

They find a tiny, unassuming apartment near Kamakura, on the second floor of an old two-story house. Right away, Mako starts trying to put house plants everywhere. “My mother had the biggest garden,” She tells him, and it's with that truly blissful smile that she gets when a memory fills her with pure joy, instead of something more bittersweet.

After that, every time he's out without Mako for any reason, Raleigh makes sure that he comes back with another plant for her. The place starts to overflow, the balcony, the roof, their bit of the outside stairwell. The flowers all burst in the springtime heat, and the bells on the gutters chime softly amidst the greenery whenever it rains. They come home from work every day to their very own jungle.

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They have their first fight in a long time when summer rolls around, when nightmares wake him up thrashing. Mako finds herself grasping in the dark, both before and after he wakes up, trying to reach into and clutch onto the places he still keeps stubbornly to himself. She holds him until he calms, and then sighs when he closes right back off. He likes to pretend, sometimes, for himself as much as for her, that she is all the balm to these dark moments that he needs. Not for the first time, Mako suggests otherwise, and he's up and away, pacing, caged.

“I've already been through therapy,” He whispers, sharply, ever mindful of their neighbors, even now.

“It doesn't have a beginning and an end, Raleigh,” She whispers back firmly, hands in her hair, watching him from the bed. “These moments will always come back to us. Always try to mess things up...”

“We don't need anyone else, now.” He maintains, facing the windows, stubborn, so fucking stubborn. But Mako hears the underlying tone of his own doubt, as well. He knows better, of course he does. But they both have their things they're still afraid of letting just anyone see. 

“Just because I know, and hold every piece of you...” She says, slowly, rising from the bed, approaching him as if he might sprint away from her, “...It does not mean I know how to heal them all.” He stills, nodding, looking out over rooftops outside, toward the sea. Coming up behind him, Mako wraps her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his back. Only when the tension in his frame eases, after a while, does she move back to bed, tugging him along.

He doesn't say anything else that night, she knew he wouldn't, although he does clutch her tight before falling asleep. 

The next day, after work, Mako hears him making some calls.

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“Just try it!” She's saying, grinning gleefully. He's eying the unfamiliar meat on the wooden stick warily, while she's busy looking adorable, as usual, grinning, a can of beer in hand. A salty wind is coming up off the ocean and blowing all in her hair, in her over-sized blue bathing suit cover-up. There's a crowd around them, waiting for fireworks to start, milling on the sand in the twilight. They've been sampling food from the rows of vendors, and toward the end of the line, Raleigh finds himself afraid of a little meat. 

“It's -heart-, though!” He laughs, shaking his head, turning the yakitori skewer over in his hand, “I liked the liver, isn't that enough?” Mako gives him a squint and a pout, shaking her head.

“Aren't you always talking, like, 'I grew up in Alaska!'” Her impression of him is, with her accent, ridiculous. And, sadly, spot on. “'I fished for giant salmon! I hunted bears!'”

“I never said I hunted bears,” He grumbles, smirking. She smirks back, tilting her head, so unfairly cute that he gives in, sighing, sticking the first chunk of fried chicken heart between his teeth. Mako laughs, and while it's a bit too chewy for his tastes, yes, it's still very good, the tang of the sauce rich on his tongue. “Damn, woman, you'd think I'd have learned by now.”

“That I am always right?”

“Naw, not going that far,” Raleigh grins, tugging her to his side and heading back onto the beach, as the fireworks start going off over the bay, “Just that pretty much everything in this country is delicious.” 

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The weekend they travel to her parents' grave site, Mako is surprised by how conflicted she feels. Though she admittedly doesn't know how many of her Shinto roots she still prescribes to or believes in now, as an adult, there's still a bit of guilt involved, that she hasn't been to see them in so long. She tells Raleigh of how Stacker had tried to bring her back at least once a year, to see to the markers and say her prayers, pay respect.

“Once I was older, though, life became so busy...” She murmurs, as they walk from the nearby shrine and into the plot, their hands freshly cleansed and dripping water onto the ornate pavement. Raleigh takes her hand, shouldering the small backpack they'd brought alone.

“Life got busy for all of us, case you forgot,” He smiles, “Aint been back to see Yancy's grave in a long time myself...I know it means something a little different for you, though.” He admits, and Mako has to smile, nodding, leading him along familiar paths around stones and monuments.

“I don't know how much I still believe, but,” She shrugs, “It is still honoring them, whether they see me or not, to take care of their graves.” 

“Oh, if I don't believe in much else, I do believe they see us,” He tells her, his voice so sure, “My brother, your folks...all of them.” 

Mako smiles, nodding, her steps slowing as she finds their markers. Raleigh is quiet, she notes, keeping himself back a few steps even as he helps her unpack the few items they've brought, helps her clean off the few little spiderwebs and debris around the stone. He knows this is her moment, though, and is only just inside her periphery while she lights her incense in the bowl, and sets the lilies and peonies from their balcony garden on the graves.

She says her usual prayers in Japanese, knowing Raleigh understands most of them. A picture of the two of them in their Drift uniforms, sealed in plastic, get nestled amongst the flowers when she finishes. He kneels beside her then, taking her hand, “You don't speak about them very often, you know,” He tells her, and Mako shrugs, smiling a little again.

“I guess not,” She doesn't feel as guilty now, though. A calm has settled through her, here, looking at their names. Peaceful through all that the world has been through. “Stacker was my father for so long, but...” She reaches out, smiling wider, her fingers brushing over her biological father's grave, “He was a sword-maker, you know...”

“Get out of town,” Raleigh grins, and Mako nods, and they're there well into the afternoon, she telling him about them. Telling them about him.

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Later, Raleigh will tell Geiszler exactly what kind of morning he'd so rudely interrupted. Or actually, maybe he won't. Truth be told, he's a little torn on that front. On the one hand, he's not the kind of guy to go into details, at least not for the last five years, and definitely not when it's Mako he's discussing. On the other hand, seriously, the man couldn't have waited until lunchtime, like a proper friend come a'calling? Especially with the news the scientist came bearing. Why start the day on that note, really? 

Of course, odds were very good that all this was just Raleigh not being ready to process said news.

It -had- been a spectacular morning, though. 

Mako was not usually on the affectionate side in the mornings. Disciplined at hauling herself out of bed quickly, yes, but usually it was with no small amount of grump and a powerful need for a strong cup of tea to become functional. Not that Raleigh was a morning person himself but, well, he was a guy. He got used to putting his urges on pause until she was in a better mood, which was usually by the time they were both in the shower before work, and that was more than worth it.

Sundays were different, however. Sundays they slept in and sometimes didn't find themselves surfacing from the sheets until close to noon. Maybe they'd catch a movie later, or find somewhere to ramble, to hike, or maybe they'd just fall back into bed to be in bed. Sundays were everything Raleigh had once figured he was fighting for. Doing absolutely blissful, sexy nothing with the exact right person.

This particular Sunday he wakes up languidly, lazily, aware of a familiar, easy weight settled on his hips. Opening his eyes, he grins, slowly, reaching up to slide his hands over her thighs. Mako's pale skin has an almost greenish glow, due to the morning light filtering in through all the plants hanging in their bedroom window. Her smile is sweet, though as devious as ever, and he feels himself hard, already, under her. “Hey beautiful,” He murmurs, softly, fingertips brushing over the slight curve of her muscled abdomen.

“Morning,” She whispers back, her voice low with promise, bending down to take his face in her hands and kissing him slowly, deeply. She draws out a deep groan from his chest as she rocks her hips, brushing tender skin against his cock once, twice, biting his lip 'til he's pushing up into her, gasping her name into her mouth. They keep on like this for a time, languid and easy, rocking into each other and yes, this is why Raleigh loves Sundays.

It's right about when they start really moving, when he flips them over and she's laughing, tossing a leg over his shoulder, that the doorbell rings.

And rings.

(“Maybe it's just a package,” She gasps, “They'll leave it...”)

And rings.

And fucking -rings-.

“BECKET! MAKO!” The familiar voice is loud, and Raleigh groans, tearing himself away with a force of extreme will. At the same time, Mako runs for the window, tossing a t-shirt over her head.

“Neighbors!” She calls down to Newt, who's standing on their front step. Painfully, grumbling the whole time, Raleigh yanks on the nearest pair of jeans and heads for the door. He's wry, however, and grinning as he's complaining, though behind him Mako seems a little uneasy. It isn't until he's halfway down the stairs outside that Raleigh realizes why.

“Man, there's these things called phones?” He's saying, spotting his friend's frame below, “You came all the way here from London without even calli--...” Raleigh swallows, once he's got a good view of Newt. Rumpled, in a wrinkled, day-old shirt, with a manic glint in his eye that Raleigh hadn't seen since the Shatterdome in Hong Kong. The man had flown all night. “Is Hermann...?”

“Fine, fine, he's uh, he's on his way to the States, actually,” Newt squints at him, hefting the backpack on his shoulder, “This...there's some news, news we've got to get to certain people before it gets to...well, all the people,” A hand went through his hair, as if it could get any messier, “So uh, I guessed something wrong, buddy. And if I'm right this time we uh, we may only have a month before we've got to handle it.”

“...Instead of a few thousand years?” Mako's voice, now in the tone of his co-pilot, asks from the stairwell behind him, and Newt nods, swallowing. Raleigh stands very still, just in case the ground decides to go out from under him. It seems likely.

Seriously, it was just inhuman, to mess with a Sunday.

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	4. Familiar Skins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I happen to be too broke to buy any of the supplemental material at the moment, I have gotten all the important points from Year Zero by this point, and may go back and adjust certain scenes, we'll see :D 
> 
> Shout-outs to other fics contained within. You know who you are.
> 
> Thank you so much for all the love this has gotten, really I'm just meandering around in my own, smutty head.

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"Familiar Skins"

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A person really shouldn't be this excited, Raleigh thinks, about something trying to reboot the apocalypse. 

For how frightened, disheartened and generally up-ended the rest of the world is feeling, Mako and Raleigh find, to their surprise, that their old roles are as easy to step back into as a favorite set of clothes. Perhaps it's because, unlike most of the world right now, they've automatically got something proactive to do. They're the ones who get to fight back. So while they're not in any way pleased by the prospect of the Rift opening, they are pleased to instantly have a certain skin to slip back on.

Things are certainly different now, of course. Marshal Hansen holds command at the Shatterdome in Hong Kong, where the reconstruction of full-sized Jaegers had continued ever since their victory...but as museum pieces. 

“The rest of the domes are scrambling at the news that the Rift's gone unstable again, but Hong Kong was been recreating 'em for posterity for the last year now, or that's the story,” Herc's telling the pair of them as they tour the familiar docks, “We've just got to slap some working weapons and operating systems into these buggers!” 

“Crimson Typhoon,” Mako breathes, looking it over. It's an impressive recreation, yes, but without the triplets nearby...they all have the thought at the same time. Even outfitted properly, the Typhoon will be missing its soul.

“They were gonna put Capital Stallion in a museum?” Raleigh tilts his head, grinning up at the completed replica of California's infamous guardian. 

“That monster downed six Kaiju in its day, so hell yeah,” Herc grins wide, “The Wheatons only asked that they get to pick 'er pilots personally. Meanwhile we get her a core, straighten out her spotlights...”

“No,” Raleigh shakes his head, swallowing, “Keep 'em crooked. Ol' Mac got a kick out of his Jaeger lookin' crosseyed.” Herc just dips his head, unable to keep a little smile from his face even as sober moments come and go, looking at the ghosts of old Jaegers come back without their pilots.

Herc's as lonely a figure as he's ever been since the last time, but for the bulldog at their heels, licking Mako's ankles. He looks older, too, for it having been only four years. Raleigh can see how much it's cheering the seasoned fighter, to have the two of them back especially. He kicks himself for not checking in more, for not taking better care of Herc. He's gonna make up for it, now.

“Newt has said that we can predict much bigger Kaiju this time, though, certainly cat fives to start with,” He points out as they pass by the feet of another, very familiar giant, and the Marshal nods.

“The new Jaegers they're scramblin' to make are bigger too,” He assures them, “But you two held your own, in the Danger, against a cat five once,” He grins, and Raleigh has to return it. It's a kindly challenge. “We're makin' you a bigger one too, don't worry. But the three of us are some of the only living veterans, best to teach the greenies on something we're familiar with.”

“I am not sure that fourteen hours as a pilot makes me a veteran, Marshal,” Mako notes, though it's with a bit more wry humor in her voice than she'd have had four years back. Raleigh smiles her way, taking her hand, and Herc chuckles.

“Savin' the world after spendin' half your life training to be one does, though.” Herc tells her, firmly, “The folks training right now? Have only ever piloted the minis, if even that.” He shakes his head, drawing in a deep breath, and Raleigh appreciates the unspoken sentiment. It was an overwhelming prospect, if this all really was going to happen again, and in less than a month, “Still, we're a helluvalot readier than the world was fifteen years ago.” Herc's smile is more hopeful again, then, looking at the pair of them, “Gonna be a busy time, lotta folks to train and not a lot of time to do it.”

“It's all right,” Raleigh grins up at his Jaeger, Mako squeezing his hand, “Our vacation was getting a little long, I guess.”

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Soon, the sparring floors will be filled with new pilots to train, to test together. For this first week in Hong Kong, however, Mako and Raleigh have the rooms all to themselves. 

Occasionally Marshal Hansen is in there too, doing his weight sets, feeding a vitality that has returned to a body that, for a long time now, has thought itself to be without purpose. Mako recalls how far away he'd seemed, back when she was in Perth. She is ashamed that she hadn't taken more interest in his well-being then, but it hadn't been in her nature, to reach out. Raleigh has rubbed off on her like that and, unspoken, they agree to reach out now.

For the moment, though, it's just the two them on the mats. Late one night with the lights of the city peeking through the over-sized windows, they move in their familiar, swift and heady dance. Mako hadn't even realized how much she missed it, til now. They danced in such different ways these days, after all, and those were bliss. Fighting, though, really sparring, moving the way they did...it was its own kind of bliss.

Back and forth and under and over. Recalling at once every one of her forms, yet also the very first time they'd done this together. The way his eyes had lit up, watching her, the way he'd gotten her blood pounding in her ears. Wanting to prove herself, to engage in that swift, perceptive conversation, to let herself be fierce even as those pretty eyes of his had made her want to grab him by the ears and taste his bottom lip between her teeth. The memory makes her grin, now, as they fight. 

“Something funny?” He asks, ducking out of the way of her high kick. Mako shakes her head, sweat beading on her brow.

“Just remembering,” She breathes, dodging his staff in turn, spinning on her feet, “I think you're faster now!”

“Nah, I know you even better now, is all,” Raleigh grins back at her, stopping his staff just short of her chin. Her eyes narrow and her smirk goes primal, a second before she drops, swinging out a leg and knocking him off his feet. He swears when his back hits the mat, and his staff goes flying. 

“And you are more predictable than I once thought,” Mako grins playfully down to him, her staff at his neck. He waits a beat. And then with a swift reach, he's disarming her, catching her off-balance and pinning her to the mat. 

“Now you're just throwin' the rules right out the window, Miss. Mori,” He murmurs the last two syllables low in her ear, her arm pinned to the small of her back with one hand, his other hand in her hair. She can't help the little shudder that moves through her limbs, the little grin that returns to her lips. 

“Some part of me wanted to then, too,” She confesses, and then he's flipping her over, kissing her hard, pressing her back into the mats. Her nails scrape his scalp, and she's that girl again for a moment. That girl who so rarely indulged her more primal instincts, who'd found herself wanting to see what else that scared up, sad-eyed pilot could do with his arms, his hands. She knows now, laughing as he hauls her up with him, carrying her fireman-style toward the showers.

“Well, long as we're fulfilling fantasies...” He growls, grinning, locking the door behind them.

For all she loves being enveloped and embraced by him, sometimes Mako still forgets just how strong Raleigh is. When he's propping her up in the showers she remembers, and marvels, and then has fun with it. The wall behind her is too cold and the water is almost too hot, and it's so much sense memory of this place that she's still Mako from four years back. That girl who wanted so many things. Vengeance, a chance, respect, and him. 

She's pretty sure the thought comes to them both at the same time. That they're both remembering who they were in those last days, and Raleigh kisses her in that rough, needy way Mako lives for. She locks her legs around his waist, arms over his shoulders as he pushes up inside of her, groaning into her wet hair. Her hips snap to meet his, and she's going to leave marks but he doesn't seem to care as she bites his neck, tasting the salt on his skin before the water can wash it all away.

He thrusts into her faster, and she grips onto his hair harder, dissolving into gasping nonsense in his ear. He might leave marks himself, the way his fingers press into her thighs. Another kiss, another tug, another roll of his hips and she's falling apart, shuddering, far from graceful as her moans echo through the empty rows of showers. 

She tightens around him, he finishes, his knees almost giving out as he does. Then Raleigh chuckles, breathless, his forehead against hers, and they're their present selves again. Mako grins, almost shyly, as he carefully sets her back on her feet on the slick tiles. She presses soft little kisses to the darkening marks she's left on his throat, under his jaw. He reaches up, smoothing her hair under the water before kissing her lips again, softly now. 

They end up claiming just about every spot in the Shatterdome they'd had the fleeting inkling to, back when they'd saved the world the first time. They never have the conversation about why it hadn't happened then, of course. They don't need to. 

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Raleigh's brain gets unusually active at night, living in a Shatterdome again. Usually long after Mako is asleep, curled up around one of his arms, he's still staring at the ceiling, his mind wandering. It's not always unpleasant, though, far from it. Something about the place just makes him feel lighter, easier, more keyed up. Most of the dome is keyed up too, but in a tensed way, drenched in dreadful anticipation. Waiting for whatever new monster the Rift is going to vomit into their world again, if anything. Raleigh's anticipation is of a different nature, however, and this night, the night after their first day of training the new pilots, he finds himself wondering exactly why, and how.

“I hear your brain,” Mako surprises him by mumbling sleepily. It's around 2am, and she's had such a long day he'd figured she would be in a coma until the alarm buzzed at dawn. She's doing a lot in the Shatterdome right now, between screening new pilots -and- training them. Raleigh feels a pang of guilt when she disentangles herself from his limbs, rising to pour herself a glass of water in their small bathroom. 

“Er, sorry it woke you.” He smiles at her from the bed, sheepish and a little bleary. They don't even question it, now, how even after years away from the Drift they only shared for a day and a half, their minds are on a shared wavelength. Mako shakes her head.

“I should be much more tired than I am,” She smiles back, holding her glass in both hands. In her underwear and one of his beat up old tank tops, she's the prettiest girl he's ever seen. She always is, “But all I can dream about is who is compatible with whom, who's fast on the mats, a natural in the simulators, and...” A shrug, still smiling, “I feel like, it is disrespectful, to be excited.”

“Just what I've been thinkin',” Raleigh admits. She finishes her water, turning off the flickering, old florescent bulb in the bathroom and coming back to bed. “Herc, Tendo, the boys in the lab. They're the same as us, I think.” She nods, curling up into his side again, her head on his chest, and he voices his theory. “Maybe we all kinda felt what Herc did, without realizing it. Like...so much of our lives, doing one thing, and then without it...”

“We were unsure of what to do with ourselves,” She murmurs, finishing his thought. 

“I mean, we've all got trauma we've had to work through as well, but...” Raleigh swallows. “You and I had each other. So did Newt and Herm, hell even Tendo's a dad now.” Mako reaches up, pushing a hand through his hair and he shuts his eyes at the soothing touch, humming once.

“You told me, before, how you'd never stopped to think of the future back then,” She murmurs, “You saw, in the Drift, that I never had either, beyond becoming a pilot, seeking revenge. So, after the fight was over, all we had was to heal, and then...” Raleigh smirks. Then it had still been a Jaeger or nothing, even if all it was for was cleaning the broken world back up. They had been blissful together and no doubt, but they'd still been aimless in a peaceful world. The fight had been their purpose, their life's work, for so long. Having it back couldn't be anything -but- a relief, on some level.

“Alright,” He says softly, but with conviction, and Mako looks up at him across his chest, smiling a little, “Let's not do that, this time. It was self-preserving then, but hell, we know we can beat this.”

“We did it once before.”

“Zactly.” Raleigh grins, sleepily, “So let's talk the future. What we're gonna have after this fight.” 

“I like this plan...”

They talk until dawn, weaving a future. A simple one, but simple is what both of them kind of idealize, long for. And for the rest of the month until the damn Rift yawns open again, they both sleep soundly through the night.

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The clocks are counting down, and the Rift is looking more foreboding by the hour, on the screens. Ready to toss up something big, Newt often says with great cheer and his usual, practically intrinsic lack of tact. Mako feels some of the belated alarm creeping up on her, but she pushes it down. There's more work to do than ever, and she's got new pilots of all ages looking up to her, Raleigh and Marshal Hercules as examples. She's been unflappable this far into the month, she can't stop now.

There are quiet moments still, of course there are. Moments stolen in dark corners and moments sneaking beers with old friends in the labs. She and Raleigh spend an evening late in the countdown eating their dinner in front of the rebuilt Gipsy Danger, reliving one of their first heart-to-hearts, just as the last of her weapons are being checked and double-checked. 

“She won't be up for what the boys calculate might be coming,” Raleigh tells her, and she nods. She knows this, and also knows that he doesn't see the soul that the original had carried in her metal, in her bones. Mako doesn't either, and she'd only known that fine lady for a little while.

“The bigger model they're building for us will be, this one only has to last until the new one is finished. We will last that long.” She tells him, assuredly. He smiles, thoughtfully. Mako glances to him, tilting her head, “Do you want us to carry on the name, when the new Jaeger is done?” To that, he quickly shakes his head.

“Nah, Gipsy Danger is mine and Yancy's,” He smirks, “A stupid, romantic name from a couple of clueless white boys.” She snorts, smiling wide, nodding. Oh, she was aware, and he winces, properly, bemusedly embarrassed. “I mean, to us it was a powerful name, two kids who didn't know any better and who'd never had a real home or a place to settle, rising to fight monsters. But even if it weren't a slur, it's not a name for you and I...” He reaches for her hand, and Mako links fingers with him, tightly. 

“I guess this means, we will need to figure out what the two of -us- are, together, inside the context of all this,” She gestures to the Dome at large, and Raleigh nods, squinting.

“Shouldn't take us very long...”

The new machine does still have a feisty lady painted on its chest, but she's got short, red hair this time, smirking like a wry, pretty soldier just under her title, Stacker's Faith.

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“Oh god, I'm so sorry Sensei!” Abi is saying for the fifth time, her voice stuffed up and nasal, and Mako just smiles, sighing, leading her through the Shatterdome halls. Behind them, the teenage girl's co-pilot is stammering apologies as well, as Abi bleeds out of her nose and ears all the way up to the infirmary. 

Well, there had certainly been better neural trial runs. There had been worse ones, too, her own coming to mind...

“It is not your fault, Cadet Lorcain,” She tells Abi, though she does turn on the girl's co-pilot, frowning, “It is Cadet Ballamore's.” Mako scolds up at the towering, wincing young man. 

Ben is only eighteen, yet he's already taller and broader than Raleigh. He clearly feels terrible, that the slight, tiny-framed girl over Mako's shoulder is turning the towel in her hands red, and Mako takes that as a good sign, “You two have one of the strongest neural connections we are seeing right now, despite being the youngest pilots. We are even thinking of giving you one of the new, Mark 6 Jaegers.” It was true. Abi was small and young, only sixteen, but her mind was quick. Ben was massive, and almost physically strong enough to pilot a machine on his own. But he needed a strong mind for The Drift, which Abi had. “You could be great, Cadet Ballamore. And I know what it is like, to carry trauma into the drift,” Mako adds, a bit more softly, as she points back down the hall, “Report to psych, work this out.”

“Thank you Sensei,” The big boy replies in his thick, Irish accent. He bows, and hurries off, after a quick, apologetic look to Abi. 

“That was beautifully authoritative!” Gottlieb's familiar voice surprises her, as Mako leads her youngest student into the infirmary. The scientist is sitting on one of the exam tables, having his pupils checked. Across from his, Newton is fidgeting through the same kind of checkup.

“I am getting better,” Mako grins, careful not to let Abi see her as too relaxed. She hands the thankful, bleeding girl off to a nurse, before approaching her unlikely friends, “Is everything all right?” She asks, frowning, noting the familiar burst vessels in Newton's eyes. They both nod, though, Hermann the one speaking up.

“We are simply going through our exercises as well.” He says brightly, his nurse removing the tissues shoved up his nose.

“Yep, planning on hitting up the first Kaiju brain you bring us this time,” Newt goes on, as chipper as his husband. It's frankly baffling, for Mako.

“...But, those were the last days of the fight, it was a desperate move,” She reminds them, waiting to be assured of this, well, madness, “They're still a hive-mind if they're alive, they will see our plans from the beginning...”

“Aha!” Newt points, “Not this time! That's what we are training for, how to keep secrets in the Drift.”

“That...that is impossible,” Mako shakes her head, still somewhat convinced they've gone insane, but Newt is still grinning, popping a pair of seasickness pills.

“Yes, it is, when you're piloting a Jaeger,” He reminds her, “When you've got metric shittons of metal to move, monsters to fight, hell no, your brain can't handle keeping anything back,” Mako nods, and Newt continues, his grin widening, “Herm and I don't need to do -any- of that. Literally all we need to do? Is look into a Kaiju brain. Nothin' else.” 

“Mmm,” Hermann nods, as Mako turns that over in her head, a little stunned, “We are working with the psych offices developing mental exercises, and the results are very promising.”

“Still a little...bleedy, though,” Newt admits, grinning, and Mako cannot help but return it, now.

“You two are as brave as any of us, I hope you know that,” She tells them, earnestly.

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The Rift opens, and Raleigh doesn't even realize how much he'd been hoping that it would be to a vast emptiness until it isn't. It's to let a massive category five Kaiju through, the beast rising from the deep and heading toward Hong Kong with a purpose. Stacker's Faith isn't yet sea-worthy, but they've trained for this on Gipsy, and two of the other, bigger Jaegers are completed and ready to fight. They have a plan, and he finds himself with great faith in the three other teams ready to follow him and Mako into the sea. 

“Ready to go back inside my head, Miss. Mori?” He gives Mako a smile, in their brief moment of privacy before connecting themselves to their Jaeger, to the Dome, to the Drift. She smiles back, reaching up to tug him in for a kiss, slow and meandering and sweet. 

“I never left,” She says, close to his lips, and Raleigh feels that thing in his chest tighten, that belated response, and he clutches her close for a long moment, their clumsy suits be damned. They're both professional here, they know they'll be fine with their attachment, in the Drift. They've both long since learned the art of letting go, of leaving fears behind before a fight. Even so. She's all of his universe, now, and they'd both lost those kinds of people before.

“I love you,” He murmurs into her hair, and with a jolt, they both realize, at the same time, how infrequently they say those words aloud. That there is something about saying it, for as inadequate as words could be, that is profound. That they'd spent so long just taking it for granted, that they could speak -without- words, words in turn had become so very precious. 

She whispers it back to him, and Raleigh kisses her again, long, lingering this time, until Herc is yelling at them to get their damn helmets on already. Grinning, bumping fists with her, Raleigh pulls it all in again, puts away the fear, and simply becomes the assured pilot who trusts his partner with his life. He does resolve, though, that should they live through this first fight, he'll tell her he loves her, out-loud, every single damn day. Call it cheesy, but it gets his courage and confidence up even higher, as the other teams check in over the coms.

“We've got a massive Kaiju out there kids, but we've got four Jaegers to kick its ass with,” He speaks up, eyes narrowing as the Shatterdome opens to the sea, “Let's punish 'em for even thinking they could try.”

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	5. Intertwined (Chainsaws, Though)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, but only because the next chapter is a lot of short scenes covering a period of months. Hopefully the chainsaw and the sex make up for it.

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"Intertwined"

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“Demon Wolf, Aspen Nitro, on us!” Raleigh calls his orders over the coms, “Kona, you two hold back in case this bastard gets past us, we'll need your guns warm!” 

He's been such a quiet, low-key guy for the past few years, working hard and keeping to himself, or to her, to the silence. Mako had almost forgotten how good leadership looked on him. How good he -is- at it, protest though he might. She grins as he protests even now, in her head, eyes on their screens as Gipsy Danger is plunged into the water. They begin walking, giants in a sea that still makes them feel small. If their connection was strong back when they first did this, it is effortless now, the rebuilt Jaeger responding to their slightest movements.

'Not the same without the chipped paint, though,' Raleigh responds to that thought, and Mako's smile widens. Oh, how she's missed him being directly in her head. She's beyond getting caught by the r.a.b.i.t by now, though there is the temptation. To look further, beyond their initial handshake of minutes before, when their memories of each other had dominated the Drift. She wanted to see more, to lose herself in how he'd experienced the past four years. And so did he, with her.

'On the way home', she thinks to him, and he grins back at her, 'I am drowning in your head.'

'Yes 'mam.' Aloud, he addresses their team again, as their computers start issuing warnings, “Woah, this one's in a hurry. Coming up fast!” 

And it is. Designation 'Nemo' is moving toward them with a speed Mako knew had only been recorded in a Kaiju once, just outside of the breach. She'd seen it herself. Her expression goes hard as they brace themselves in the sea, their Jaeger's arms raised in a defensive posture. Tendo's voice crackles over the coms, just as Nemo breaks the surface, earning itself a collective gasp from the assembled teams, “Watch yourselves, that bastard's got...!”

“A huge-ass horn!” Ballamore's voice shouts from the Wolf, just as Mako and Raleigh barely manage to maneuver out of its way in time, a horn nearly as long as their Jaeger's arm just grazing off the metal of their chest.

Right. Nemo, Narwhal. They recover swiftly from almost being run through, reaching out and wrapping their arms around Nemo's tail. Its body is long, sinuous, with gangly arms and legs. So it's not the best position for them to be in, but before the Kaiju can turn and give Gipsy Danger a good throttling with its very nimble-looking hands, Aspen Nitro is running their way, leaping, bringing its elbow down hard on Nemo's head.

“Damn!” Jerome, one of Nitro's pilots, calls out as they stumble backwards, “Think we dazed it...” Indeed, the Kaiju is staggering, shaking its head, “But it's got one thick skull!”

“Gotcha!” Raleigh calls back, as the two of them let go of the tail, sending a fist toward its jaw, ducking under the horn. It barely phases the Kaiju, though, while it sends a tremor all back through Gipsy Danger. 

“It's armored!” Mako realizes, eyes widening as Nemo thrashes, annoyed, one ginormous, clawed hand swiping out and taking a chunk off of Aspen's armor, revealing its core. 

“Right, no time to save energy!” Raleigh's voice is firm, rough against any doubts. Mako can hear it in his head, that he knows he can't waver or be shaken right now. Neither can she, she knows. Young as they still are, bigger and meaner as these Kaiju are gonna be, they're the leaders and veterans here. They're the steady port. They draw their sword, “Get out your big tricks and guns, pilots, let's tear through this ugly bastard's hide!”

Their first swings draw Nemo's attention away from Nitro, the blade sticking in the bone plates covering most of the Kaiju's body. It responds by vomiting acid their way, which they narrowly side-step. Mako distantly wonders if they'd have been fast enough for this one, back before. They're fast enough now, that's what counts. 

“Give us time to warm up the saw, and this'll be over fast!” Abi's calling from Demon Wolf, and Raleigh's confusion registers.

“Saw?”

“You'll see!” Mako cries, as they take another swing at Nemo with their sword, ducking away from its claws. The blade gets through this time, just barely, slicing through soft flesh underneath. The Kaiju shrieks, and then howls, and then dives for them again. Aspen has mustered themselves by now, moving forward with their own blades in their hands. Their Jaeger's heart is exposed, but they're just as fearless, just like the pair of cousins inside. Jerome and Alabaster slice Nemo across its face before it can reach Danger, laughing the whole time, and Mako and Raleigh warm up their plasma canon.

That's about when things nearly go south. In a blindingly fast move, the Kaiju is suddenly around the whole cluster of them, and surging toward the shore. Kona barely has time to get their guns up before Nemo is there, ready to run them through with its horn and then burst into Hong Kong. 

From out of nowhere, moving faster than Mako thought the big, Mark 6 Jaegers could move, Demon Wolf is flanking the monster. Thrusting its fist forward, out swing the various components that turn the Jaeger's entire right forearm into a spinning, roaring....well, there's no other word for it, it's a giant chainsaw. Little Abi is practically cackling over the coms as she and Ben cut through Nemo's tail like butter, just as Kona Leviathan sends a volley of canon blasts into its face. 

With Raleigh whooping in surprise both in her ear and in her head, Mako's laughing as they raise their canon to help finish the job. The cheering cuts off short, when Nemo swings around, diving for Demon Wolf, its horn impaling the Jaeger through the torso. The sounds of those two kids crying out in pain sends Mako and Raleigh surging forward, faster than Gipsy Danger should, technically, be able to move, their sword point coming down through Nemo's neck while its horn is still caught in the Wolf.

It twitches for a few long moments, roiling up the sea around them, before going limp.

“Lorcain, Ballamore, speak to me!” Raleigh calls, over the sounds of celebration from the Shatterdome. 

“Not dead yet,” Abi's small voice comes through, wincing, crackling, and everyone on the strike team breathes a sigh of relief over the coms. Raleigh is grinning wide again, shaking his head, “Core in tact. Felt uh, felt like it ran through the Wolf's spleen, if that makes sense...”

“Perfect sense,” Mako assures her, “Let's get back to base.”

First fight. Everyone lives. And Mako's youngest students even come home with a trophy, limping back to the Shatterdome dragging Nemo's head behind them, by the horn.

Newt needed his brains, after all.

'You're amazing,' Raleigh whispers in her head, and Mako smiles.

'And you're a leader.'

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Issues of propriety hadn't been a problem when they were first co-pilots. They had definitely been glued together at the hip back then, but in a comforting, affirming manner, through all the celebrating, grieving and media. Raleigh had needed her steady mind just as much as she'd needed his steady frame. There had been the echoes of something more, of course, but it hadn't been what they needed or were ready for just then. 

It's a lot different now. Raleigh finds himself with utmost sympathy for the Kaidanovskys, rest their horny, bad-ass souls, because -damn-. Adrenaline plus The Drift plus a rousing victory equals the neural pathways getting flooded with all the other times the blood's been pumping recently. It's all he and Mako can do to keep it together, to keep smiling, taking the praise and clasping hands with celebrants all through the gambit of cheering comrades back at the Shatterdome. 

Thank fucking god for heavily-armored drift suits, Raleigh thinks. Mako grins wide.

When (Marshal) Herc calls for the clock to be reset, finally, people start going back to their jobs and the two of them are able to escape. Mako slips out of his grasp as well, though, laughing and telling him that she has to be a good trainer and check on the kids first. He doesn't try to hide his pout, watching her go, which just makes her laugh more. Raleigh hasn't seen her this giddy in a while, it's hard to stay even a little bit petulant.

The kids are a little shaken, but fine (and apparently latched onto each other in the infirmary, too. Raleigh really hopes there's some birth control involved there because goddamn, knowing himself at eighteen, thank GOD his co-pilot was a sibling). Mako comes back to their room in a flurry, excitedly rambling about phantom pains from the Jaeger lingering even after the link is cut off. She actually looks at him, then, already back in his sweats and a t-shirt, hair wet from a quick rinse, and her words fade into an eager smirk. 

His lips stay fused to hers as he helps her out of her suit, her hands going to his hair as soon as her gloves are off. His own hands move over her figure with a surprising speed, sense knowledge they happen to share telling him where all the snaps and straps are on her smaller, curvier armor. “I'm a mess,” She breathes, but Raleigh shakes his head. 

“No you're not,” He murmurs, pressing his face to her neck and she really isn't, as she steps out of the last bits of her suit, leaving it in a pile some tech will have a fit over later. She sweat out there, sure, but somehow it just makes her skin smell more like, well, Mako. All salt and her magnolia shampoo. She tugs off the tank and shorts she'd had on underneath without pause, grinning under messy hair, and he has to kiss her again. 

Their first Drift had been sharing everything that had happened before. Subconsciously it was all there afterward, each others history, the way they worked, ticked. It had been a good foundation. Drifting now is reliving everything that came after. Raleigh can remember what it was like with Yancy, and that had been the love of his brother, being assured of it, even at each others worst. Seeing Mako's love had been staggering. He knew well enough what she'd see. That he adored her for all her best and all her worst, that he owed her the life he had, couldn't imagine any kind of life outside of her spectrum. That she saw him the same way...

Well, it's impossible for him to wrap his head around, except for knowing that the Drift doesn't lie. Somewhere along the way, he'd done something right by her. There was a mutual desire to keep doing so, especially when they might die tomorrow, despite surviving today.

She tugs him backwards until the back of her knees are hitting the edge of their bed. Mako sits, flopping back onto their worn blankets and reaching out as if she expects him to follow. Raleigh has other ideas. A groan leaves her mouth as he kneels between her knees, and she's gnawing on her bottom lip as his rough hands slide up her calves. He's got the stupidest grin on his face, at the way she twitches a little in anticipation, propping herself up on her elbows to watch him.

He doesn't break eye contact, nor does his grin falter as he kisses the inside of her thigh, her breath hitching, “Seem to remember...” He murmurs, thumbs at her hip bones, hooking in her underwear and tugging 'em down her legs, off her ankles,“A stray thought about this being your favorite...”

“Yours too,” She whispers back, gasping when his mouth was very suddenly back between her thighs, hands on her hips and tongue teasing at her pussy. Yep, that was very true. There were very few things he loved more than the sounds she made while he did this. Figuring out how to very deliberately, thoroughly unravel her. He rolls his tongue against her clit, and it's not long before she's groaning his name into her hand, her teeth sinking into the back of her wrist as she comes against his mouth.

He leaves the top of her pelvis with a little kiss, grinning up at her over her stomach, and Mako's eyes narrow at him even as she's flushed, short of breath. Raleigh loves this about her. He can make her come ten ways to Sunday, and she'll take every single one of them as a challenge. She reaches for him, grabbing the front of his t-shirt and tugging him up to her lips, pulling away his remaining clothes and damnit, he's been aching for her since they left the fight. 

Mako is sinuous when she moves, when she turns them over and settles herself onto his cock, tossing her head back. It's always slow, at first, as she takes in all of him, grinning, savoring it. But as soon as she starts to move, starts to rock into him, Raleigh feels his smug playfulness fade. He can only sit up, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her chest. He might be thrusting up to meet her but Mako has control, her short gasps in his ear moving through a smile. His mouth on her tits, tongue swirling around a nipple ring pushes her over into another orgasm, but it's all her, tightening around him and writhing with a feverish rhythm that shuts off most of his higher brain functions.

He feels that thing he did the first time, that consuming desire to sink into her flesh. She wraps her arms tight around his neck then, riding him through her orgasm, breathing his name over and over again into his hair until he's coming too, a gulping, shaky groan wrenched from his throat. Mako draws the sound in, kissing him, pressing closer and closer until they slow their rocking, their grinding into each other.

They disentangle slowly, trailing kisses behind and no, it hasn't been this way in a long time, despite the fact that the two of them are always going at it. Raleigh grins, falling back onto the bed and taking her with him. Mako leans over him, pressing more kisses to his chest, and then resting her forehead against his. His eyes shut, reaching up to frame her face with his hands, his fingers brushing her hair, brushing the bits that have been blue again for a while. It's a perfect moment.

“...So, this is the new post-fight routine, right?” He asks, and Mako grins, even as she punches his arm.

“You can still be such a boy,” She murmurs, lying back, stretching. Raleigh turns, pressing himself into her side, head on her chest. Her fingers start their familiar languid journey, tracing the scars on his shoulder and back, feather-soft and warm. He shuts his eyes, letting out a long sigh.

“Your boy, Miss Mori,” He whispers back, voice only breaking a little.

 

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	6. Markings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Science, what's that? This chapter would be more about scenes and character growth than action or fights. This was also a good spot to fill some prompts :D I totally didn't expect this fic to turn into a linear plot. Which is probably obvious!

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"Markings"

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It's a week between Kaiju attacks, in the beginning. Stacker's Faith is completed before the next fight, and many of the other domes are open by the third. Kona Leviathan heads back to protect the States and her native Hawaii, and Hong Kong welcomes new local heroes the Gao sisters, piloting the Crimson Typhoon II (two arms this time, China is attached to the legacy though). Russia's Shadow Dancer is up and gliding through the waves up North, and two more of Mako's cadets become the Rangers guarding Japan. This is timely, as by the fourth week, two to three Kaiju are rising at a time, each going in a different direction.

“Their masters aren't organized this time, not at all,” Newt tells Marshall Hansen, after he and Hermann drift with that first fresh and full-sized Kaiju brain, Demon Wolf's saw proving a fine match for the thick skull. 

“Time has passed differently in their universe,” Hermann looks more excited than Mako has ever seen him, almost giddy even, dabbing at his nose and running for his blackboards, “It has been four of our years since you two closed the breach and obliterated their largest settlement. For our would-be exterminators, it has been all of one month. Good lord...” The man happily loses himself in the mathematical implications, and Newt picks up his narrative seamlessly. 

Mako can only smile to herself. They may have never been pilots, but their connection was strong.

“And when we say obliterated, we mean, like, ob-lit-er-ated.” Newt grins, dazed and pleased as ever, “Now they're just pissed and throwing all they've got left at us! Huge cat-fives with armor, horns, five arms maybe...”

“...This is something to smile about?” Herc raises an eyebrow, and Newt nods, enthusiastically.

“Well yeah. That Jaeger core destroyed their biggest cloning facility, so,” He gestures, and Raleigh gets it first.

“So they think they can beat us before they're out of force-grown flesh to throw at us.” 

“Precisely,” Hermann pipes up, sighing happily at his new scribbles that will no doubt turn all numerical understandings of time on their head, “For all their astounding intelligence, and for all it backfired on them the last time, they remain insistent upon underestimating our species.”

“Good to know,” Raleigh gets that cocky little smirk, and Mako can't help grinning at him. Herc, however, isn't ready to relax just yet.

“And they didn't see you?”

“Not as far as either of us could tell,” Newt nods, “I felt the strain though, man, even just sitting there in a comfy chair, not moving, trying to keep both our signatures from registering with the hive mind.” Hermann nods as well, holding a rag to his still-bleeding nose, “I can see why there's no keeping secrets in the Drift for pilots, cause damn.”

“So, will it work again?” Mako asks the next most prudent question, tilting her head, Raleigh finishing her thought.

“Yeah, do we strap a bomb to the next corpse, or...?”

“We believe that they have made it more difficult than that,” Hermann tells them, “The readings on the breach are different this time, and I am still puzzling out in what ways, exactly. Sadly, our excellent specimen of a brain deteriorated rather quickly...”

“You just called a Kaiju brain excellent there, Herm.” Newt smirks. Hermann gives him a squint.

“Yes, damn your groupie head.”

“Right, well, let's get you boys some more brains, then.” 

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She gets the first cluster of Sakura after the second attack. One blossom, inked into the skin of her shoulder for every Kaiju they've beaten thus far. Raleigh couldn't say why, at first, that he found them as captivating as he did. For sure they're pretty, inked with a very skilled hand. He was watching, fascinated, as she sat very still in the parlor chair, Newt's artist in Hong Kong tattooing her with little perfect leaves and petals. She ends up adding a new flower after each fight.

They're like her hair, he finally decides. Seemingly incongruous on the professional, focused engineer and pilot unless, like Raleigh, one knew her better. Unless one knew that she was made up of so many separate, much more interesting little parts. He likes to study them all. Poor Mako, she keeps having to swat him away from the healing tattoo all through the first week. He wants to touch, though, to feel her slightly raised skin. To catalog every new thing that becomes part of Mako.

She teases him about it, but he knows she's the same way. Carefully folding every new article of navy blue PPDC clothing he swipes for himself, holding rough sweaters in her hands, to her cheek. Memorizing the texture. When Stacker's Faith gets a hefty dousing by Kaiju acid, Mako insists on being the one who cleans the burns on Raleigh's arm every day. She becomes an expert with the bandages, studying the way his skin scars, and he loves watching her as she traces the new lines of shiny skin with her soft fingers.

New scars, new information. 

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It's two months on, and while they've yet to lose anyone, anywhere in the Rim, there have been a lot of close calls of late. The Jaegers are bigger, but the Kaiju are as well, having all kinds of new tricks and weapons in their arsenals. They're also just plain more vicious, even infused with a level of actual vengeance, according to Newt and Herm. 

Raleigh inspects his right arm, presently, at that thought, inspects the scars that have only recently finished their oozing and closed over. 

Yeah, no, the Kaiju aren't just there for a merry city-crushing, and they've got a lot of nasty surprises. The science husbands aren't having much luck with the Breach, as far as how to close it. But they are learning enough about what kind of monsters are being sent up, and that's something. That's keeping their Rangers alive.

It's still a helluva war, and it's one that's not giving them many breaks this time around. But their enthusiasm hasn't wavered. It helps that they keep winning. That evening, though, Raleigh realizes that it's been harder on some folks than others, and he kicks himself once again for not noticing. He used to be so good at reading other people's emotions. Maybe he's grown too used to how easy it is with Mako, everyone else seems so much further away.

She's working late in the dome, overseeing Faith's repairs. He's never able to sleep without her, not for the last year. So despite being tired from a day of training, of keeping himself in fighting shape, and also feeling a little woozy from his painkillers, Raleigh finds himself wandering aimlessly and very awake, brushing his teeth for the third time as he walks the halls in his sweats. On his third pass by his room he spots Max sitting in the threshold, the dog pawing at the closed door until he hears Raleigh coming. 

Raleigh pauses, blinking, regarding the bulldog. Max waits a beat, licks one of Raleigh's unlaced boots and trots off toward Herc's room down the hall. Raleigh squints at the Marshall's door, which has been left ajar.

“....We're having a Lassie moment here, aren't we pal?” Max just looks back over his shoulder, whining. “We are, neat.” Raleigh follows the dog, tucking his toothbrush away in his pocket.

“Marshall?” He knocks on the door frame, letting the heavy door swing the rest of the way open, slowly. Max waddles right in, flopping down with a huff by Herc's feet. Herc is sitting alone at a small table, the lights dim. There's a half-empty bottle of whiskey in front of him, and a handgun resting on the bed behind him. Raleigh licks his lips, tilting his head to one side, eying the Marshall warily.

“Raleigh,” Herc's voice is warm, though, motioning him to come in. He does, carefully pressing the door mostly closed behind him. “Didn't think you'd be awake, boy.”

“Mako's still working on Faith, and my brain aint able to quiet without her,” Raleigh replies, keeping his voice and his frame loose, easy, taking a seat across from Herc. The older man's eyes are red-rimmed, but going on his own experience, Raleigh's pretty sure he hasn't been drinking for very long. “...All right, Marshall?” 

“Herc, when it's just us,” He tells him, quietly, looking down at the ice in his otherwise empty glass, “It's after midnight. S'Chuck's birthday.” Raleigh nods, looking down at the table for a moment. 

Sometimes you don't need to have drifted with someone to understand. They weren't all that different to start with, Herc and Raleigh. And Raleigh could remember some pretty long nights of his own, alone back in Alaska with a bottle and his brother's ghost somewhere over his shoulder, in the back of his head. He reaches for the unoccupied glass on the table, stealing an ice cube from the other man's. Herc's smile warms a bit, as Raleigh pours them each a finger.

“To Chuck,” He lifts his whiskey, clinking glasses with Herc.

“To my boy,” Herc takes a drink, sighing, settling. The tension eases from his arms, his hands, and that's a good sign. Raleigh should know. “He did admire ya, yanno.” Herc smiles, shaking his head, “Hell, I didn't even need the Drift to know that.”

“Had a funny way of showin' it,” Raleigh smiles back as he says it, warmly. Max flops sideways onto the floor, sighing in relief.

“Don't I know it,” Herc chuckles, “Nah, just. When that boy came up against somethin' or someone he knew was better than him, he had to try and be even better. To impress that person, or break his fists trying.” He pauses, eying the liquid in his glass, his jaw working. “...You'd a really got on with him, Raleigh, when he wasn't gearin' for a fight. Letting out the anger he bottled up. Boy was so much more than even he knew.” 

“Tell me,” Raleigh leans back in the godawful folding chair, “Don't have anywhere to be.”

Herc Hansen smiles at him, the corners of his tear-ravaged eyes crinkling. For the next two hours, Raleigh just sits and listens. To stories of Chuck's mother, his childhood with both parents, and then with just one. Chuck in school, Chuck in fights, Chuck losing his mind and falling to pieces over an orphaned stray bulldog puppy they'd found. At 3am, Raleigh helps the Marshall into bed, tucking the handgun into his pocket with his toothbrush before he goes back to Mako.

“I'm gonna hold onto this for a while, all right Marshall?” 

“I'd appreciate it,” Herc nods. 

After that, Raleigh makes time every evening fora game of cards, or at least a drink or two with the man.

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“ORGANIC MATERIALS!” Newt shouts, three months in. He's sprinting into the Shatterdome, startling The Marshall and Mako from the blueprints they're conversing over. A ways behind him, with the actual data in hand, Hermann is sighing as he follows Newt. “Nothing from our world can get through the Breach this time, like, nothing!”

“...You're doing that thing I hate, Geiszler,” Herc sighs, reaching up to rub the bridge of his nose, “Where you act all excited about the worst news,” Mako just grins, used to this by now. Newt will get there, and he does.

“I know, but like, this is actually totally an advantage. They've screwed themselves again. Kaiju are full of some effed up chemicals all on their own, see...”

“He is thusly thrilled,” Hermann picks up the thread, “Because this means quite a lot more poking around in parts of the Kaiju other than the brain.” He's leaning heavily on his cane, Mako notices. The last few drifts have been hard on the scientist, but still he keeps on. Newt offers his shoulder for him to lean on as well, still beaming.

“I'm gonna turn a Kaiju's corpse into a bomb for ya, Marshall.”

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They lose Aspen Nitro four months on, in a three-Jaeger drop with the Tokyo crew. Both of the cousins manage to get out by their escape pods, but their Jaeger is demolished. Demon Wolf had gone along as well, and half of her head is torn off. Abi survives the attack but just barely, her equipment keeping her limp body from plummeting into the sea. Ben pilots their Jaeger on his own through the rest of the fight. He and the Japanese team take down both Kaiju, but it's a heavy blow. 

Abi spends a week in the infirmary in Hong Kong. Raleigh watches as, for the first time in a while, Mako's spirits go very, very low. She lingers by her injured Rangers and goes quiet for a time, distant, and for once he can't easily read her. Mako closes herself off, on purpose. But as usual, there are no secrets in the Drift, and after their next fight, after they return to the Shatterdome and Stacker's Faith is getting hosed down, Raleigh wraps her up in a tight embrace.

“You didn't fail them,” He murmurs into her hair, “You taught them so well, we both did, and they did everything right...” He doesn't say the rest, just squeezes the tops of her arms softly. She'd heard his reaction in the drift, and Raleigh thinks it at her with all his might now, again. 'Stacker'd be so proud of you, and of them, how you've trained them. You didn't let anyone down.'

She kisses his breastplate, just over his heart, and lets herself rest against him for a long while.

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By month 5, only three Jaegers have fallen, four major cities have seen damage, and Newt, with Herm's mathematical assistance, has successfully cooked up a foul mixture that will turn a dead Kaiju, with all its natural ammonia and toxic excrement, into a time bomb. Stacker's Faith is armed with this new form of payload, and in three days, just before the next predicted Kaiju rising, Raleigh and Mako will be waiting outside the breach. It's a good, solid plan. Raleigh is keyed up, almost giddy in fact, and even the Marshall is smiling more often. 

Mako is thrilled too, for sure. Unfortunately, her excitement and optimism over their next course of action is tempered by a growing trepidation, over an issue entirely unrelated. Something she had not planned for, a variable to her routine. She catches herself with an anxiety that threatens to shake up everything she's doing to make this project a success. There are bruises forming on her palms, from all the times she's pressed her fingernails into her hands out of stress over the last day or so, and it just won't do.

After dodging Raleigh and his quizzical looks for a bit, and after a long conference with herself in their bathroom mirror, she heads down to the labs with a fresh purpose. Newt and Herm are elbow-deep in various Kaiju bits and blood, and when Mako tells them what she needs, Newt almost slips in it, “I need you to teach me how you do it. There is something I cannot carry with me into this Drift.”

“...Mako, no,” Newt steadies himself at his work table, Herm helping him to remove a pair of rubber gloves that go all the way up to his armpits. On the table, a Kaiju heart squooshes, lazily. “It halfway toasts our brains just -sitting- there and doing it, what trying to shield your thoughts would do in a Jaeger...”

“I don't need to shield my whole mind!” Mako tells him earnestly, shaking her head, “I just need to be sure that one thing stays hidden. One subject, one memory.”

“...It is conceivable,” Hermann muses, over Newt's protests, rolling his eyes when his spouse starts to flail, “-Think-, Newton. There are exercises we've come upon, in doing this, for systematically putting persistent thought patterns to the near-literal back of the mind. To put them to use for only one...”

“Could work, yes, but would still maybe get in the way of her piloting!” Newt points out, his concern clear. Mako smiles a little, sucking in a breath through her teeth. And Newt notices. “...Wait, what are you trying to hide?”

“Something, that...” She answers slowly, carefully, “Though it might slow me down to hide it, if Raleigh knew, he would not even let me get into that Jaeger. And even after I'd inevitably fight my way back on,” Herm chuckles, “He would be too distracted to fight clearly himself.”

“Uh huh,” Newt squints, unamused, “Mako, if you're asking me to help you hide the fact that, I don't know, you suddenly want to be single? From my very muscular friend who could very easily hurt me? I'd like to know right now.” 

“Of course not, I love him,” Mako sighs, exasperated, “...If I tell you what I must hide, can we at least try?” Hermann is immediately supportive, and Newt nods, reluctantly. And so she tells them.

They waste no time after that, Newt suddenly, entirely, on board. They spend the next three afternoons training her on how to tuck a single thought away. She finds that she is good at it, sitting in a chair in a nice safe lab. And if nothing else, if it doesn't end up working in the Jaeger, at least those three days are stress-free. Mako is able to be excited along with everyone else, to catch her lover's giddy, childlike optimism. 

It still may not work once they're back in Stacker's Faith. But as they kiss outside of the Jaeger, Mako's brave enough to try. She frames Raleigh's face, basking in his confidence as he murmurs into her hair, “Let's end this war before it's really started, eh?”

“You're so ridiculous,” She murmurs, tugging him in for another kiss, feeling him grinning around her mouth, touching the spot on her shoulder directly over her tattoos. Yes, though. They were going to end it. And then they were going to have their future.

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It's a four-Jaeger drop, Shadow Dancer and Kona Leviathan joining them for the fight along with Demon Wolf, both its head and its younger pilot fully mended. “All right, this time we're the aggressors, Rangers!” Raleigh calls to the others as they approach the Breach, “We dunno how many might be coming up, but we -are- going to kill 'em all.” He takes a deep breath, as the sea rises up to cover them, “It's dark and cold down there, but don't let it shake you up. It's a fight like any other.”

He's saying this for himself as much as for them. Being this deep down, this close to that glowing, awful tear in the world has him sweating a little. There's a soothing voice in his head, though, and Raleigh smiles over to Mako, who smiles back. She does ease his nerves, just by being there. Which is funny, seeing as half of his anxiety is over taking her back into the depths. They'd almost died in the Rift.

'This time will be different,' She thinks, as they walk. The confidence in that thought is more than he's ever felt from her, and Mako is a tower of confidence. 

There's something different about the Drift today as well, something about her. He'd felt it in her uncharacteristic nervousness when they first initiated the neural handshake, and he feels it now, in the things she keeps to the front of her mind, in her distracted expression. She is putting all her thought to this mission, to him. Raleigh figures it's just her way of facing this place again. Her smile tells him he's right, and so he doesn't press further, rather turns his gaze back upon the sea.

The four Jaeger only patrol the water for a matter of minutes before two category five Kaij and one category -six- burst out of the Breach, one after another. Demon Wolf surges forward and tears into the first with a fury, sawing it to shreds before it can do much harm. The second is more of an ordeal, Russia's Shadow Dancer and her two pilots, sisters and former ballet dancers, sending it on a merry chase around the Breach and directly into the sites of Kona's guns.

Raleigh has never seen a fight go so smoothly, which is exactly why, though he's grinning from ear to ear, he doesn't dare let anyone get comfortable. “Alright kids, that big bastard is coming around!” He calls, as the hulking, spine-covered cat-six Kaiju locks onto Stacker's Faith and rushes toward them. “Leave enough for me to pump full of TNT!”

Faith's sword grazes off the Kaiju the first time, and the second, its long fangs sinking into their Jaeger's arm. Mako shouts in pain, as a fierce little voice growls over the coms, “I've got you, Sensei!” just before Demon Wolf hacks off one of the monster's legs. 

Raleigh's cheering and Mako swiftly recovers, grinning proudly as the monster howls into the sea. Kona takes out most of the Kaiju's armor with their guns, clearing a spot for them to bring their sword down through its back, severing its spine.

“Releasing the payload!” He calls back to the Shatterdome, as Mako punches in the sequence that brings up a new canon in Faith's good arm. Shoving their fist down the dead Kaiju's throat, they dump Newt's concoction inside. 

“You've got less than a minute, then!” Newt's voice calls over the coms, and with a little help from the other Jaeger teams, they're rushing that corpse to the edge of the Rift, tossing it into the Breach and tearing up the ocean floor to get clear.

He doesn't expect the explosion that they get. Raleigh wasn't even sure what he had expected. It tosses them all backward, a giant pillar of yellow and blue light shooting up through the water, lighting up the ocean floor for a mile and it's almost as if he's seeing the night sky under the sea. 

Then it retracts, the water violently roiling around them all. They stand firm this time.

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There's a sudden burst of cheering over the coms, of Herc shouting to them, “You did it again! Goddamnit, you two did it again!” Their Rangers join in, scattered Russian mixing with English in the channels, and all Raleigh Becket can do is grin, shaking his head, looking to his co-pilot with a rush of love and pride and awe and...

...Her memories from the past week hit his mind with a violent jerk, even as her lips spread in a shy, sweet little smile. His jaw drops, and he's left staring at her like an idiot, turning over the image of her sitting alone on the edge of their bed back in the Shatterdome. Of her looking up at the ceiling, not knowing whether to be terrified, or enthralled. He doesn't even consider being mad at her for hiding it. All he can feel, again, is awe, awe and love. Riotous, ridiculous love. Raleigh feels himself grinning, his mouth still hanging open.

“Oi, Becket, you alive?!” Tendo's voice registers, and Raleigh finally shuts his mouth, swallowing, his voice rough when he replies.

“Very alive,” He clears his throat, and Mako laughs lightly, gloriously happy and he's a full-on idiot for her yet again, “...I'm gonna be a dad.”

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	7. Northernmost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff, yup :D

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"Northernmost"

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There was a lingering itch at the back of everyone's heads, a fear that it wasn't really over. As time passed, it proved to be merely a tick, a leftover trauma the world learned to live with. From all the boys in the lab had seen in their wanderings through the brains of monsters, the PPDC's final blow to the Breach had almost surely destroyed whatever the enemy had left to attempt an extermination of the planet with. They were so sure, they even went on record, Newt gleefully looking reporters the world over in the face and saying, “Yeah, no, totally gone, go make babies and stuff.” 

After the first few raucous events, of just allowing themselves to be happy with their friends (it had been more subdued last time, when the Shatterdome had felt like the only people in the world mourning Cherno, Typhoon, Stacker and Chuck), Raleigh looks to Mako and she just knows, understands. They're blissfully, ridiculously happy this time around, watching everyone else in the Shatterdome get plastered in celebration. Abi's drinking Tendo under the table despite being half his age and size, bless the Irish. Herm and Newt are making out in a corner like teenagers and Herc looks absolutely, thoroughly content, Max resting in his lap, belly-up. 

This is what Raleigh wants, Mako muses, watching him watch the rest of them. The tugging in her chest tells her that she wants it as well. Wants to stay in the bubble, the community. Wrapped up in one of his big, scratchy sweaters, she curls into his side on the bench they've claimed in the mess hall. Outside those walls the rest of the world waited, wanting bits of them, interviews and photo ops, as much as they wanted to also show some genuine gratitude. It had all torn them apart the last time, sent them off to distant corners. No one really wanted the bubble to be broken again.

“Two weeks,” He murmurs into her hair, his arm around her shoulders tugging her close. If he was tactile before he'd known she was pregnant, he's reached epic levels of touchy now, his hands rarely leaving her frame, her hair, her abdomen, whenever they were close. “We give 'em two weeks of sound bites, and then we're finding ourselves some corner of the world to tuck away for the winter in...”

“A cold one,” She finds herself murmuring back, “You miss seasons, cold winters, I felt it.”

“And you miss Japan,” He grins, “And I think we both want the sea...”

“I believe we can work with this.”

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Two weeks exactly, and they're settling into a small house just outside of Wakkanai, Hokkaido. November is starting to bleed into December, snow already thick on the ground, piling up on the sides of the roads, salt coating the concrete. Raleigh takes a familiar pleasure in shoveling their front walk every morning, in drawing in deep lung-fulls of the chill air. He's ten years old again as frost coats the inside of his nose, reveling in a snow day, watching a trio of deer stroll along the nearby, pebbly beach. 

Mako's still working for the PPDC as their focus shifts back toward rebuilding efforts, though a large portion of their workforce remains in Jaeger preservation this time around. She'd gotten her share of job offers, the phone ringing at all hours of the day and night from places all around the globe (Raleigh's gotten very good at sleeping through her cell phone buzzing, which actually worries him a bit. Mako assures him that babies tend to be louder and rather more shrill). She chooses to stay with the PPDC not simply because it is what she knows. They also provide benefits, allow her to work from wherever she decides to put down roots, and acknowledge her many years with them, her heroism. They'll take care of them both.

Which apparently includes letting them hole up like fluffy hibernating animals for the winter, and Raleigh is more than all right with that, grinning into the cold. They aren't the only ones, either. Newt and Hermann are living and working in Tokyo now, where Tendo and his tech skills, his wife, and his kid had somehow also landed. The four of them fill up Raleigh's facebook feed with pictures from various bars in Roppongi on a weekly basis. Mako will be commuting between Wakkanai and Tokyo come spring, after the baby is born, and Raleigh? Well, he's got his vet benefits. And another project in the works, though that may take some time before it's in any way gainful. 

They're alright.

For the time being, he's got snow and he's got firewood, and he's trying to sell Hercules, who's back in Sydney for the time being, on the perks of Northernmost Japan. So far the man is claiming obligations to distant relatives, but Raleigh is pretty damn sure they've almost got him hooked. 

A kid needs a grandpa, after all. And a dog.

The front walk is clear enough for the mailman, finally, and they do get a fair amount of mail these days. Nobody physically bothers them in Wakkanai, but their address is common knowledge and as such they get plenty of fanmail. Mostly from kids from all around the world. Mako likes keeping their drawings, of Jaegers and monsters and family pets. They're the very first decorations that go up in their second, tiny bedroom, wall-papering all of one wall. A child should know his parents' accomplishments, she tells him.

It's still early in the day, and stepping inside Raleigh quietly shuts the front door, carefully pulls off his boots and coat. His footsteps are soft, near-silent as he moves through their small, cozy house. Mako sleeps later and deeper these days, without anywhere to be. She busies herself like always when she's awake, never content just to sit for very long. But she languishes in bed, and Raleigh is a big fan. Pulling off his snowy jeans and sweater, he slips back into bed behind her, the blankets still warm. He buries his face in her hair and she murmurs sleepily, turning over and burrowing up against his chest. 

“Mmm, you're up?”

“Was up, just clearing the walk.” He murmurs, his lips brushing over her sleep-sweaty forehead, a hand sliding between them, over her middle. There's the slightest swelling there already, and he grins every time. Poor Mako though, having to haul around his broad-shouldered, big-headed spawn...

“Should make you some breakfast,” Her mumbling is broken by a yawn, and he chuckles, shaking his head, pulling her even closer.

“It's still early, pretty girl.” Raleigh shuts his eyes, “And I wanna stay right here.”

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Little things start registering with her, here and there. One day she notices the searches on his browser, that he's been looking up things such as Japanese citizenship, and a few local numbers. English books on traditional sword-making show up on their bedside table. Mako smiles around her mug of tea the morning she spots those, side-eying him through her growing, still-blue hair, and Raleigh only smiles back. He's gotten very good at making tea, too.

In February, they finally surface from their wintery home to travel south, to Sapporo for the Ice Festival. They meet up with Nate and Con there, Aspen Nitro's former pilots, and Mako is thoroughly amused watching the three young(ish) men get hammered at the Sapporo brewery. She is very much content with tea and the good, smoky yakaniku, trading somewhat more coherent piloting tales with the boys. Tourists in the beer hall want pictures with them all, and Mako knows her obvious belly will be all over the rags by morning. And she finds that she does not mind, not in the slightest.

Which is a funny thing for her, really. As they move through the festival the next day, Raleigh cheery at her side despite his hangover, Mako even finds that she's a little disappointed that her big puffy coat almost completely hides her six-month-bump. While she has always striven to be heard, to have her hard work and dedication noticed and to pay off, Mako has never really wished to stand out. She took to being a hero humbly, she wore a bit of unusual color in her hair as a badge, a reminder, she dressed simply. 

Then again, her life before Raleigh, before Hong Kong, had been about little more than a fight, than a war. She links arms with him now in the snow, walking under skeleton trees before a half-frozen lake, mountains looming above. Her life is about much more, now, and she recalls when she'd been a little girl, how she'd been so proud of simple, pretty things, because her family hadn't had much to spare. But they'd had much love. “I like having color again,” She finds herself murmuring into the cold, her breath a rising cloud.

Raleigh doesn't need context. He can read her just fine, smiling, stopping at a cart to buy her a frozen banana with chocolate coating. But no sprinkles, he doesn't even need to ask, he knows. Because he's been craving the damn things as badly as she has. “Yeah? Hadn't noticed, between the tattoo, the coat..” He nudges her puffy, bright blue arm. Mako chuckles, biting into her frozen treat, and then handing it back to him.

“You give me color,” She tells him, tugging her coat flat against her until the bump shows through, if only for a moment. He kisses her, lightly. He tastes like all that she craves, chocolate and fruit, and Mako's grin is almost as silly, as slap-happy as his.

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The shared cravings get a little ridiculous. Granted, he does thank the angry Kaiju gods, or whomever, that it's only cravings and not Mako's various other ailments that he's experiencing by proxy. Not that he's insensitive, quite the opposite, Raleigh knows he'd be useless to her if he -also- developed aching feet, an aching back, and an over-active bladder. Not that Mako complains much, she rarely complains about anything. He's still attentive with the shoulder rubs while she works at her computer, and absolutely does not let her traverse their impossibly steep, death-trap of a staircase, carrying her up to bed every night in his strong arms. 

She puts up with him, the saint of a woman.

But again, the food thing is terrible, and a little bizarre, how they're actually -swapping- cravings. They both crave chocolate, but the crossing over ends there. He wants nato and squid all the time, despite the fact that he'd hated both before, and Mako wants the very worst sort of greasy, roadhouse cheeseburgers like she wants oxygen, hold the onions but double the pickles. Lucky for her, he knows exactly how to make those. Unluckily for him, he still thinks nato tastes like an armpit once it's past his gums. 

Everything else, though, is purest bliss. Raleigh can't remember being this happy in his life. The first time he took a ride in Gipsy Danger comes close, and the day Mako Mori's mind crashed into his on a helipad in Hong Kong comes closer. This is singular. This is sheets patterned with little ducks in the crib down the hall, a partner as fierce and smart as she is soft and kind. This is a snowy sea and plenty of hard, manual work to do, someone to love, and never, ever being alone again.

“Your hair is getting so long,” She croons, softly, during a lazy afternoon of keeping warm primarily via body heat, in their bed piled with care-worn blankets. Her hands slide into his hair which, yes, is just passing the nape of his neck. Then her fingers are in the beard he's been growing too, and her smile widens, “I kind of love it. My mountain man...”

“Yeah? I like it too,” His own hands move over her bare, pale skin, over bits that have changed, grown, and others, like her muscular arms, that have stayed the same. His lips brush over her collar bones, the tops of her swelling breasts. Her little laugh as his scruff tickles her skin is adorable, and then it goes breathy as his hands wander further. They've had to be more careful lately, sure, but the tug, the need to be as close as possible, to all but -become- each other, hasn't let up at all. 

They're both really grateful for that.

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He comes into the world calling for her.

“Of course,” Mako sighs, grinning, wanting nothing more than to sleep for a thousand years. The baby on her chest seems to have quite the same notion, but god help anyone who tries to pick him up, who tries to take him away from her. 

“Like father like clingy son,” Raleigh murmurs, kissing her forehead, the top of his son's fuzzy blonde head.

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	8. Harbinger To Amen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with me! The last chapter, finally, and all the emotions that go with.

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His name is Adam, and he's like some inhumanly perfect mix of the two of them. Or at least that's how Raleigh feels about his son, and he figures there's nothing wrong with that. He can't stop touching the baby, and while neither he nor Mako are exactly thrilled to be woken up every three hours like clockwork, once Adam's in his arms Raleigh will happily forgo all sleep, in the world, ever.

Problems start to show a week in. He's been a perfectly healthy, rather big baby up to this point, and yet into his second week of life the poor kid can't keep his dinner down. Mako has been a trooper, nursing even as she's already working to get back into fighting shape, back into her job, but Adam is having none of it. They switch to formula, and then a different formula, and then to an organic formula, and then to soy. Each to no avail. 

“Y'tried goat milk yet?” Newt asks, on one of his regular, rambling calls to Raleigh (Raleigh's pretty sure it has to do with Newt's having been a Drifter, yet not a pilot. Other pilots really don't have much to talk to Newt or Herm about, but Raleigh and Mako were their ins. It's like a half-bond, and Raleigh accepts it just fine). “I remember my baby cousin being the same way, when I was around seven or eight? Only thing her little belly could keep down was goat's milk, man.”

Another week later, and Raleigh finds himself in possession of a trio of goats tethered outside in the springtime thaw. His son is gurgling contentedly after every meal. 

Somehow, ridiculously, this is what finally convinces Herc to move to Japan. “You two can't possibly know shit about farm animals, I'm just savin' your kid.” Is his gruff response, two days before he boards a plane. 

He settles into a little house just down the road from them, with Max in tow. He sets himself right away to putting up fences, wrangling the nannies into a new enclosure and winning them over within a day. Raleigh figures a kid has never had a more love-struck, attentive grandpa either, as Mako hands Herc the month-old baby for the first time. The older Aussie grins wider than either of them have ever seen, curling toward the little lump of a person, crooning gruffly at him. 

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She can tell he's misinterpreting her burning, aching need to be back in shape after the baby. Mako only loves him more for it. She's been lean and strong for most of her life, and while no, she's no paragon of self esteem and she'd definitely felt a little self-conscious when the weight came on, it's not what's driving her now. She adores how sweet Raleigh is as he lavishes her with attention, tries to tell her that she doesn't need to rush it for him or anything. Mako chuckles, shaking her head in their bed, her hands all in his long hair.

“Silly boy, it's not all about you,” She smirks, as he pouts up at her over her breasts. “...All right, yes, a little bit, it is...very strange, when your body becomes something you are not used to.” He nuzzles her belly, kissing her there, and a soft sigh escapes her lips.

“You've been a fighter much longer than you've been with me, though,” He guesses, correctly, and she nods, smiling down at him. Hazy, and blurred a little, as he's doing such very good things for her at the moment.

“It's not right for me, not being ready to fight,” She murmurs, shutting her eyes, “I always want to be ready, to be poised...to protect him from anything...” Her voice hitches, as his mouth has travels further south. He understands, and as she blisses out Mako is so very grateful. 

By the time she heads to Tokyo for work she's very much back to her old self, leaving the men with the baby under the blooming Sakura.

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“So, here's a thing for you,” Newt is clearing his throat over the video chat. Mako is on a four-day trip to Tokyo, for work, and behind the scientist she is waving to Raleigh on screen, eating an instant noodle bowl. He waves back, grinning, making little Adam wave as well, though Newt does have his attention. “You kids getting knocked up got Herm and I thinking, back in the Shatterdome...”

“Woah, woah, you're having a baby?” Raleigh grins. Newt blanches, shaking his head, raising his hands. But he is grinning a little. Raleigh is thoroughly confused. Mako is amused.

“I mean, kind of not, can you picture either of us keeping an infant alive?” Raleigh has to admit, he really can't. Babies, as it turned out, required a certain level of attentiveness that he's not sure either Newt or Herm could manage. “...There's a kid, though...”

“Kid?”

“...Did you know the Kaidanovskys procreated?” Newt asks, his voice softer now, looking away. His eyes widening, Raleigh has to admit that he very much did not. “Sasha was awesome at keeping it quiet! Their last fight before Hong Kong, back in Russia? Gal was four months pregnant. She had the baby, and a month later they're pummeling Leatherback...”

“Aw man...” Raleigh swears softly, holding his son closer. Newt nods, working his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Was a little girl, Nadia.” He sniffs, “Her grandma just died, kid's like, almost five years old and....well I mean, wouldn't you want your kid raised by people who fucking understood what you and Mako had done, and all?” The man is so earnest, so touched, that for all Raleigh wants to bring up his attention problems and Herm's shoddy temper, somehow, the idea of the two of them with a little Russian kiddo -works-. He grins, shrugging.

“Go for it, man,” He tells him, hugging Adam tighter. The baby flails, “The boy could use some friends.”

Nadia, as it turns out, is an absolutely beautiful, smart, moose-terror of a little girl. She spooks the goats, she accidentally breaks Adam's toys, and the only person her own size she gets on with at all is one of Max's puppies. Naturally, Hermann adores her.

 

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Mako comes home from every trip to Tokyo to an increasingly scruffy, messy lover. Raleigh has started working with a local sword-maker, she knows. He comes home sweaty and sooty and grinning every night, and though they barely speak of it at first, Mako can't help the flutter that his gesture is causing within her.

“I'm doing stuff, Mako,” He jokes, his voice and twang deepening comically as he showers, “Thaaaangs.” 

She soon knows it's more than just a gesture, though. As time passes, as Adam starts to walk, as Herc lazily sees to their goats and cities slowly regrow under Mako's planning, Raleigh embraces more of her culture's traditions than she'd ever expected. He asks her to marry him during a walk by the sea, just before a thunder storm. Not only are they married in a traditional ceremony, he submits his application for Japanese citizenship. His sister Jazmine rises from the woodwork to see him married, embracing them both, tearfully loving on her nephew.

When it all goes through, and Raleigh Becket is officially a Japanese citizen, he's taken on as a legitimate apprentice. “You forged your own sword, you carry your family's honor,” He tells her, the night before his first true day of work, lips brushing through her hair, “Your role is to defy tradition, mine might just be to embrace it,” Her answering grin tells him all that she feels. He's never staggered her so fully. 

She, the girl-child, is the son. He, the foreigner who wholly loves her, who leaves his former life behind, is also the son. 

By the time their daughter Aiko is born two years into their marriage, Raleigh can acceptably fold steel, and Mako can turn steel into cities. Newton and Hermann have seen their work lauded the world over, Herm's on time-space and parallel universes, Newt's on silicone lifeforms and hiveminds. Jaz moves in with Herc, scandalizing and then amusing Raleigh. Abi and Ben get married and make it to holiday dinners, all the pilots they'd mentored either showing up as well or at least sending cards.

And Mako, between her daughter, her son, her husband and her job, cannot help but feel that she's more than done her fathers proud.

Both of them.

 

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It is 25 years before the Other World attacks once more, and not solely with Kaiju. There are foot soldiers, and Kaiju ridden by highly intelligent, cross-universal beings, with weapons strapped to their backs that can vaporize humans. Adam, Aiko and Nadia pilot the first of the Mark Sixes, while the children of friends and fellow pilots battle the oncoming storm on the ground, or in Jaegers, with all the purpose of two generations who'd not known an adulthood of peace.

Mako and Raleigh and Stacker's Faith fall into the Pacific late in the third war. Raleigh is sixty years old, Mako is fifty-five. Their children are there with them in their coms, along with the girl who will one day be their daughter-in-law, as they take their final breaths together under Razorfenn's claws.

Raleigh sees the whole of his life, with Mako Mori at his side. He sees his brother and his wife embracing, laughing, Yancy motioning him toward them...he sees his sister growing old, having children with a man he so respects.

Mako sees the whole of her life, from the monster who stole her family away, to Stacker, to Raleigh and the life that they'd given to each other. She sees her fathers, her mother, all laughing with Raleigh and Yancy and the Kaidanovskys and the Weis and Chuck. 

They're waiting for her. For the both of them. 

As the pod fills with water, as cruel claws tear Stacker's Faith asunder, Mako and Raleigh smile in their last moments.

 

One day, their children will join them. Be it a month along in the war, or when they're old and grey and medals are hanging on Adam, Nadia and Aiko's walls, pictures of grandchildren smiling up from desks and nightstands. 

Humanity had not given up. Humanity had fought and won against every onslaught, and all because of the generations that had been inspired to action.

Inspired by the boy who'd lost his brother, the girl who'd lost her family, and the man who'd brought them and so many other misfits together, to save the world. They'd kept saving that world, and their legacy would never be forgotten.

 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who stuck with me on this venture <3


End file.
